Anzac Day Weekend

We have just had a lovely long weekend away in Canberra visiting my parents. We visited the amazing Questacon, where the boys just had the most marvellous time. The very first exhibit that we saw were huge robotic dinosaurs. A mama Maiasaur with her nest of little ones, a Stegasaurus and of course no dinosaur exhibit would be complete without a terrifying Tyrannosaurus. They were half-size (but enormous to little people) animatronic dinosaurs that were moving, roaring and even blinking. The dinosaur loving Captain was totally enthralled, but the little one was quite frightened by them. He stood motionless, pointing at the T-Rex model absolutely frozen with fear. Naturally I took a photo of this before I rescued him, mean Mummy! The Captain was very impressed with it all though, especially after our previous dinosaur exhibition disaster... aged 3 we took him to see this, after looking at various fossils he asked to see the "real dinosaurs" what do you mean we asked... "you know, the alive ones" he explained, looking at the pair of us as if we were stupid! Poor old Captain, he was devastated when we explained the meaning of extinction to him. Well, Questacon now has a lot to answer for as he has now been announcing to anyone that will listen that "Canberra has real dinosaurs!"

I think that the Baby was much more impressed with "Mini Q" than the dinosaurs. Hours of fun to be had!

Loving the time spent with Grandma.

I have not seen a rainbow for what feels like forever and then suddenly saw two this weekend. Beautiful!

We rode our bikes, all of us (Grandma, Grandpa, Daddy, Me (plus little one on my bike) and the Captain, from my parents house to Manuka, for coffee and babycino's. Then down to the lake and we did the bridge to bridge loop. I was so proud of the Captain riding all that way. We did have lots of stops, including a lengthy playground visit and time spent watching model yachts meander lazily around some black swans, but it really is a long ride for a little boy (probably around 9k) and he loved every minute of it . Perhaps Ross' plans for him to be the next Lance Armstrong are not in vain!

Baking a Dolly Varden

My sweet little niece recently had her 4th birthday and in our male dominated household of helicopter, pirate ship and digger cakes, I thought it would be a lovely change to bake a Dolly Varden cake for her. Foolishly I thought that this would be much easier than it actually was. It all started out well and I felt quietly confident as I popped the cake into the oven and sat down to drink my tea... after first stopping to admire how nicely my Cornish Ware pudding basin matched the mug... hmm clearly should have been a bit more focused!

Uh oh! Total disaster... husband came to the rescue and opened the bottle of red in the background.

After a glass of red, a bit more oven time and an urgent phone call to sister-in-law seeking advice on where to amputate Barbie's legs. (We went for a full leg amputation). I then wrapped Barbie's pelvis in glad wrap to keep things neat and tidy (ie. no cake inside Barbies bits... that sounds bad but you know what I mean!). The end result was not as catastrophic as I was anticipating. The clothes peg in Barbie's hair was to keep her hair out of the way for icing.

Happy Birthday Miss Zee!

School Holidays

The boys have had a fabulous time...

The holidays started over Easter which we celebrated with their first "Egg hunt" in the garden. They literally raced around in their pyjamas shrieking...



We explored galleries...


To inspire us in the future...

and created elaborate duplo constructions (this one was called "Emergency Cool!")...

Wheely bugs! Fortunately we have a suprisingly hardy floating floor...

We visited the zoo and found out that Meerkats like the smell of rye cruskits, there were a dozen meerkats salivating on the other side of that wall...

Explored some marvellous playgrounds...



Made a necklace for Grandma's birthday (you can see it blowing in the wind), she wore it proudly while we ate lunch (at a rather smart cafe!)...

Rode our bikes...

and started potty training this one... (his idea not ours!)

All is well at pirate HQ!

Book worms - hurrah!

I adore books, I collect them, I read them voraciously (and have done since I was a little girl), I have even insisted that we investigate the local library options before any house purchases! So when I see the boys are starting to share a similar love of reading and books it makes me feel tremendously good!

It truly warms my heart to see them cuddled up together enjoying a book.

"Make and Do" a Pirate Ship

Inspired by the amazing Dawn Treaders that Lier of Ikat Bag made with her girls, (I found Lier via The Brothers Trimm), The Captain and I made a pirate ship. We carefully read all the tips and instructions provided by Lier and then sat d0wn with the glue gun and an old cardboard box.

I roughly sketched outlines onto the cardboard with a pencil and then cut them out. We glued all the bits together using a hot glue gun. (This was probably the highlight for Nicholas, he asked if he could have a glue gun for his birthday!).

We made the mast out of a kebab stick and a paddle pop stick. I cut the sharpish end of the stick off after we had used it to puncture holes through the cardboard and the sail.

He loves it. Tomorrow we shall add the helm, anchor and life boat. In the meantime, Captain Blunderbuss (The Captain's altarego), has taken some Little People and lego men as hostages.

Easter... oh to be at Depot Beach!

Easter always makes think of Depot Beach (well, after all the more obvious associations like religion and chocolate). My parents have a holiday house at Depot Beach and I have spent many wonderful easter holidays there. Sadly this Easter we are unable to visit as the house is undergoing some much needed renovations. Instead, I have been reminiscing about times spent there. Including our wedding:


R and I collected all the stone "nameplaces" from Pebbly Beach (Depot's neighbour) and then returned them after the wedding. The shells we used to tie the napkins were collected over the years, many of them from as far back as my childhood.

The two hanging flower arrangements were made by my beautiful mother and an extremely talented friend (Thanks Mark!). They used two old vintage lobster pots that we had found washed up on the beach and carefully arranged Singapore orchids inside them. Another gorgeous friend had flown in from Singaore that morning with the orchids (stored in flight in the champagne cart in first class!)

The rest of the flowers were simply purchased from the Flemington flower markets in Sydney that morning and then "arranged" (stuck at the last minute) in old jam jars, the same ones my Dad uses every year to make his famous homemade jams.

As you can tell from this photo, Depot Beach is very undeveloped, in fact it is in the middle of a national park. I wrote a very heartfelt letter to National Parks and Wildlife requesting permission to get married on the beach and I was so grateful when they approved our request for the marquee on the beach.

It was a magical wedding, Depot Beach is magic!