Christmas Food & Festivities

This Christmas we have a tale of one gingerbread house, shortbreads starring bunnies with bling, a journey starring santa in an upside down dunny, two and a half christmas trees, much cooking and even more food, and two birthday cakes.

I have to add the cheesecake, fruit cake and mini mudcake christmas puddings to the cake tally, because we are still eating those. Can I count rumballs as cake too? Pudding? Pavlova? Trifle? Three fruit pies made with fruit stewed up from the christmas fruit and vegie market?

Family Christmases

Visited Dad before Christmas this year. 

Here's Theo & my dad, doing blokey thitogether, jump starting my dad's Harley.

 Here's the marvellous shell museum at Lakes Entrance.

 

Some jellyfish & a swan family in the water.

Entertaining school concert for my little bro & sis & two nephews. The ones on the floor are sheep and my nephew is on the left :).

 We also went to visit Theo's brother and sister in law in Ballarat & I was extremely nervous as I'd never met them. It was funny later that I'd even worried because the brother was just like Theo and his dad, and his wife was really nice and we had a fair bit in common. Silliness.

Hanging Rock

 

 This was one of our impulse Sunday activities. After church we went hey, why not go to Hanging Rock? So we did. I don't think I'd ever been there, Theo had. On the way there we stopped at another POW camp site at Graytown and on the way back we stopped at what I originally took for the world's largest ant hill, but was just a pile of diggings from some mine. Theo posed, I photographed. Memorable moments.

Doing & seeing

Visiting Col, Jess the dog looks

on while he prepares the orange

gun for shooting. Good fun :)

One thing I love to see when I'm driving (to the                   

extent that I'll change lanes to follow it more closely)         

is the little newborn calves travelling down the road            

in the back of some farmer's ute.

And this is neighbour Theo and I dismantling an old brick BBQ in his backyard. I severely bruised my thumb with the hammer. I earned the description of 'tough as nails' from this endeavour. 

         

                                                                                                                                                                                          

 Here is Junie acting in a typically bizarre fashion.



Here is a rather picturesque shot of Southern Cross station, on a recent Melbourne trip. Made me feel all happy and spring-like.

    

Rain and other events

The wind was so crazy yesterday when the storm came that when I ran outside to rescue my laundry on the clothesline, I had to put my foot in the laundry basket to prevent it from blowing away :) I love storms though. Apparently a number of shops locally were flooded out and some had roofs collapse as well. Excitement.

The rain unfortunately washed away most traces of the childish behaviour from the other night of neighbour Theo and I, when we went and wrote in the gravel of the car park next door. Giant initials and love hearts and things. That was after we went and lay on the soccer oval and watched cloud pictures in the sky.

This carpark is the same one that had me hiding from people going past my kitchen window in tractors and had me appearing in the local paper with another neighbour to apparently vent my frustration at the lack of community consultation. Oh, hey, I'll let you see the article:

I seem to be a public figure lately (not really). I also won some money through a local shopping centre competition the other week and was notified by a telephone call broadcast on local radio. I could barely understand some of my hysterical ramblings when I listened to it later :).

Last night I babysat for my little bro and sis, which in a roundabout way involved a La Porchetta birthday dinner and Theo was roped in to watch a Star Wars video (that was obviously serious boy business).

I'm off to do some cooking now, will report back later with my achievements.

My life in 10 points

Several things that currently define my existence.

1. I lost my diary and am surviving by ringing to double check any possible appointments, making notes in my phone and living by the calendar that has fallen underneath my fridge.

2. I am officially divorced as of last Saturday November the 14th. I received the official notice on Monday and wanted to stick it on my wall in celebration.

3. Theo neighbour is more than just a neighbour now. In case you didn't know.

4. Facebook is a remarkably effective, if not a harsh and impersonal way to notify people of such changes.

5. Theo neighbour is on nightshift and I am listening to Guns N Roses as I become more hyperactive and reminisce about when I was a teenager and thought Gunners were so cool. I have an urge to bake.

6. I am glad that the cool change came in this afternoon and so now I am able to do the dishes without suffering heat exhaustion and possibly now not all my plants will die.

7. There is a mountain of grass on a rug in my lounge. It belongs to my rabbit.

8. There are few things like a bad disaster movie to make you cheer up.

9. I am trying to reduce my book collection by an entire bookcase in order to declutter my life.

10. I currently weigh more than I ever have in my life and almost every person I meet tells me how well I am looking. No exaggeration. It's a funny situation to be in.

POW camp tour

On the weekend, myself and neighbour Theo went on an annual bus trip to and tour of the site of a local WW2  P.O.W camp, hosted by the local museum and historical society. It was a nice, historical, weird communal experience, with the bus trip in particular making me feel like I was back in high school again. Anyone else have nightmares about that? hehehe ;)


Here we all are.....

And here's Theo next to some wall of something....

Here I am on the steps of a recreation area

And here's some barbed wire and things...

 The remains of some gardens...

 

Some wall and what's left of the jail cells.

 And home again, home again jiggity jig.

 

There were all sorts of people there and one Japanese lady writing a book, and a German man who was somehow associated with it. We were told many little personal stories along with the history of the place and just the explanations of what we were looking at. It was well worth the trip and I would go again :)

Theo and I then followed it up with an equally historical trip to the local cemetery to admire the graves and find all our respective relations' graves we hadn't seen yet.

Melbourne Day by Phone

My day began with pleasant comforting misty views through the train windows in the morning, and a choc drizzled waffle indulged in for morning tea ;).

I continued with more pleasant views from the met train, if that can be believed ;) on the way back from my appointment, many hours spent waiting around in the train station, including an entire hour spent facing a wall-sized television screen featuring nothing but an advertisement for an airline.

Then, "*tap tap*, there's no place like home.... dang, it didn't work!". Looks like it's back to boarding a sunny train and home by public transport after all.

Show and Tell Friday

Here are some of my favourite plants: my geraniums! I especially love my scented ones & am always looking for them at markets & nurseries & in people's front yards lol ;)

This one is a lemon-scented geranium. It was only planted last year & has grown heaps.

This one came from a market & was

labelled as a clove-scented geranium.

It does have a weird spicy smell.

This one came from a local nursery & the tag calls it 'Westray'. It has a strange herb-y smell, almost like fresh coriander. I love the pinky-purple coloured flowers :)

This one came from a cutting from my dad's garden. It is a peppermint scented geranium & the leaves are big and velvety-furry.

Here's the host blog here.

Other Random Whroo Highlights