Happy Halloween

Too busy to blog today.

It's Halloween, you know. The monkeys have been counting down the days.

I have been out most of this week with appointments and meetings, so today there is some last minute Halloween happenings around here.

Cooking spooky food and decorating.

Tonight - trick or treating for the first time. In our area, it gets a little CRAZY.

It should be fun.

Last day of Blogtoberfest! - I did it!

Bric brac love

For as long as I can remember I have been collecting any kind of bric brac related to eating.

Plates of all colours and sizes, dinner sets, tea sets, teapots, coffee pots, jugs: big and small, mixing bowls, glasses of all description and for every use, platters, crystal, dessert dishes, tureens, egg cups, salt and pepper shakers, scales, lemon squeezers, serving spoons, vases, mustard pots, jam pots, espresso cups, not to mention my tablecloth collection. 

I'm not really fussy, I just buy what I like. Sometimes during my life, I have had gone crazy with buying, and at other times I didn't buy much for years. But I guess I am always looking.

I came home from a trip to Adelaide once, with a cream petal ware plate set in my hand luggage. I carefully wrapped plates and jugs from Italy and Greece in my dirty clothes while travelling. And in Morocco, a little boy was sent to get fresh hay, so his uncle could carefully pack 14 antique bowls safely for their journey back to London and later to Australia.

Today I have been rearranging (groaning) cupboards to try and fit in some of my latest finds. These are some of my favourites.

A pile of mix-matched blue and white, perfect to match in with this set (not complete) from my mum.



Everyone one in the house is loving these gelato coloured glass dessert dishes. Just $4.00.

I have lots of random green pieces and these have been added to my collection, all just $1.00 each.

What kind of things do you like to collect?

Go here, to see who else will be blogging daily for Blogtoberfest.

One more day to go:)

Vintage linens

I hadn't been able to find any vintage sheets in my local op shops for months. I admit, I was hoping to find something new on my travels interstate.



However nothing could have prepared me for the bounty I came home with. In fact, when I laid it all out I felt a little giddy. So much! Too much?

18 sheets and 14 pillowcases.

While there were many bargains to be had, I must also thank Mrs Gooseberry, who gave me some of her stash. Thank-you, thank-you.




Also uncovered in the linen section of the many op shops I visited, were:

3 doilies
3 table runners
1 set of place mats
1 set of napkins

1 souvenir tea towel
3 tablecloths



and 1 pot holder. Love this.

Have you had any good finds lately?

Go here, to see who else will be blogging daily for Blogtoberfest.

Roma Street Parklands

We practically had the whole place to ourselves.

We wandered through the pretty flower gardens, vibrant, hardy blooms that reminded me of my aunts garden.

We sat under large shade trees by the lake and ate a picnic lunch, chicken and salad rolls with feta and pesto, fruit and chocolate. I could have sat there for hours, but no, not when there was exploring to be done. We spent some time wandering around the lake and then,

into the rainforest.

Our day continued to be relaxing, which is not always the case on our trips to Brisbane (read - never).

After our morning spent at the gardens, we managed a quick trip to Ikea, again, I wondered, "has everybody left town?" Ikea was not busy! The kids got straight into the play area and in our hour free, we got everything we went for. Happy with that, and with time to spare, we visited the Woolongabba Antique Centre for a look around and a coffee.

Sitting back in the booth seats drinking milkshakes (kids) and cappuccino's (us) we all agreed at what a lovely day out we had had. Gone were the days when we would drive to Brisbane, do only one thing before someone (usually Spunky Monkey) had a meltdown and we would return home again.

It looks like we can finally plan a full day trip to Brisbane. Yes, we have big kids now. Lovely.



Go here, to see who else will be blogging daily for Blogtoberfest.

Where is everybody?

I've decide to call my October blog posts 'the spring issue'. I wonder, can you bare any more photos of flowers and trees? I hope so, I am going to share some of our photos from a recent trip to the Roma Street Parklands.






There will be no weeping cherry trees or tulips in these photos, Roma Street Parklands is the largest sub-tropical garden and in the southern hemisphere and a marvel in it's own right.




We spent a magical four hours here and wondered, "where is everyone?" The place was almost deserted (we didn't mind) but we wondered why everyone wasn't taking advantage of such a beautiful space on such a beautiful day.

Some more tomorrow.

Go here, to see who else will be blogging daily for Blogtoberfest.

Strawberries and Cream

 Spilling out of vases on the dining table.

Today I've been making strawberry jam and strawberry ice-cream with local strawberries.

As I swirled the bright red puree into the cream, making fine threads of hot pink, I thought of how much I love this colour combination.

It is all around me right now.

Favourite books.

Cloth from Sapa, Vietnam, a trip taken at exactly this time, 10 years ago.

Cheats ice-cream.

 The last lone gerbera, from a local flower farm.

Stretched fabric over a canvas.

A recent gift, brought back from the Philippines by a friend.

What is your favourite colour combination right now?

 Go here, to see who else will be blogging daily for Blogtoberfest.

My Princess's, Princesses

Yesterday afternoon, when I picked Miss Moo Moo up from school, she was holding a piece of paper, (a half drawn picture) close to her chest. I could not see it.

When we arrived home, she declined afternoon tea and sat at her drawing desk, not allowing anyone to go near her. If we went into the room, she threw her whole body across her drawing and we were told, not so nicely to: "get out".
 

Half an hour later she came into the kitchen to show me her latest works. I was amazed. I'm not sure if it is obvious to everybody else, but it was obvious to me. She had drawn the Disney princesses. There was so much detail, I asked her how did she draw these with nothing to copy.

She rolled her eyes at me as if I was stupid, "Mum, I've known these princesses since I was two"

(from the top left) Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Rapunzel, Belle, Tiana, Jasmine.

Go here, to see who else will be blogging daily for Blogtoberfest.

Recuperating

 a walk in the clouds

 the secret lives of bees

 fried green tomatoes

 sense and sensibility

anne of green gables

little women

the duchess

For as long as I can remember, this has always been my way of slowing down. 

When I was a child and school holiday mornings were spent running about my Nana's farm, I welcomed the midday movie. I would come in from the heat and sit with my Nana to watch old movies: Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Doris Day, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple, Jerry Lewis, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly and all of those wonderful Busby Berkeley movies.

When I was saving to go overseas, in my early twenties, I worked two jobs, six days a week. For six months, I left home at 7:30am and came home at 10:00pm on most of those six days. Sunday was my day of rest and most Sunday afternoons I could be found on my mums couch watching movie after movie. I really was too tired to do much else.

Even when I lived overseas, this was a Saturday afternoon ritual. Most Saturday's went like this: my friend and I would go to a gallery or out shopping, often it was to Portabello Road Markets, as we could walk there from home. We would get some lunch to take home with us and be home in time for the mid afternoon movie on the BBC: Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Kathryn Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck, Rock Hudson, Sophia Loren.

And for the month before my son was born, I spent a lot of time lying on a mattress in the lounge room, my swollen feet elevated up on the coffee table. It was so hot and my feet hurt, what else was there to do, than watch movies? This was the first time I discovered 7 movies for $10.00!

Now I'm a mum, there is no ritual of movie watching. I might put a dvd on, on a Friday night, but I rarely see more than half and hour before either falling asleep on the couch ( I hate this) or turning it off and going to bed.

But if I'm am sick or feel I need some rest time, I will still put on a movie in the afternoon. If I am sick, I hate to go to bed and sleep even though I know that it is what I really need. And often, if I pick up a book, seeking some quiet time, I find that the words just dance around the page, I will read a paragraph four times and usually put it down in frustration.

No, if I need to recuperate, getting lost deep into a movie is the perfect cure. The perfect way to recharge my batteries. I have not been able to shake this dreaded flu since arriving back from holidays. Today I feel better, but still exhausted. I must catch up on some housework (read MUST in large letters) Will I put on a movie later today? We will see.

These are the movies that I have watched over the last couple of weeks while being knocked out with this flu. As you can see I'm a bit of a romantic. Period dramas are the perfect escape.

Go here, to see who else will be blogging daily for Blogtoberfest.

Marshmallows by the fire

Marshmallows by the fire on a Sunday night.

Just because.

Bliss

Sorry blogtoberfest, I didn't blog yesterday. I have had the flu since returning home from holidays and feeling slightly better, I think I overdid things on the weekend. A spring fair, a couple of long bike rides with the kids, a barbecue and coffee with a friend. Basically, I was just too tired to blog. I was too tired to take any happy snaps last night either, so I am posting these that were taken on Father's Day. We definitely weren't rugged up last night - summer has well and truly arrived here!

Go here, to see who else will be blogging daily for Blogtoberfest.

The "Op Shop Express"

This is the name we gave to our car on our recent travels..... as in....

"All aboard the op shop express"


Surely one of the very best things about travelling about, is all of the new op shops discovered along the way.

Go here, to see who else will be blogging daily for Blogtoberfest.