Crayons, frogs and jelly fish with the last stretch coming up!

I am not talking about fabric (or even horse racing) but the last stretch before I finish this (first) semester at uni (and the last term before school holidays for summer!) I have only had one week holiday (school holidays was two weeks) but it was relaxing and fun. I had my sister's boys over for a sleepover on the first Monday. I bought them all a white t-shirt and had fabric crayons and they drew their own design on them. I washed the shirts and two of them wore them the next day when my Mum and I took them to the Planetarium for a look see and a show. Before the show at lunch time we had a small picnic and a play at the Botanical Gardens next door. Then a play and explore after inspecting Neil Armstrong's space suit and other stuff there. Boys love this stuff!

T-shirt designing

Two finished shirts

Three boys and a planetarium

Then one sister and nephew joined us for a Bribie Island beach mini break. A friend has a house two minutes from the surf beach that he only uses on weekends and offers it for holiday breaks! Fantastic .. it was a really cloudy and overcast the first two days when my sister was there but we went to the beach anyway as the boys don't care about weather when there is unspoilt, unpopulated beach. Running and digging and screaming ... they had a great time.

Beautiful day at Bribie Island

My sister left and we stayed for another night and day and had the most beautiful day. My son started by saying he wasn't going into the water but would just be playing on the sand... I said ok just make sure you have your togs on ('swimmers' in Queensland speak). Of course we ended up staying all day and he went in and out of the water three separate occasions.

Green frog on house stairs

This is a small green tree frog (one of two we saw one night) on the stairs. One time we went up and my son screamed ... I found him in the toilet saying there was a frog in the bowl. It was much bigger (at least double this size) and I just saw him slip away. I don't know what it is there but there are always green tree frogs. This time the avocado tree was just finished fruiting and we managed to pick 2 hard but 1 ripe one which we ate on baguette toast - yum!

There are often jelly fish in the water at Bribie (or blue bottles - much smaller, tiny even, marine stingers) but none this time on the surf side, but there were a few of these beauties on the calm side. This one was about 35 cm long (13") so they are pretty big. They sting and hurt but can't kill you like some marine stingers we have!

Jelly fish

Calm side of island

The weather has been cold and really windy here the last two days (my least favourite weather is wind - everything else I can cope with fine) but we still went for a bike ride this afternoon and finished off with going to the local movie theatre to see The Smurfs of all things but my son enjoyed it.

On the way to Bribie Island we stopped at a church thrift shop that always has patterns and I bought a few so I'll show you when the camera battery is charged and I can download the photos.

Paris, river cruise 2022 - photo bomb!

(this post has been in my drafts since July 2022 due to life circumstances. I'm just going to write just a little and then just show some photos) My friend worked on a Superyacht for many years and through this connection was offered a friends and family deal on a river cruise in Europe. It was a deal too good to miss even though it wouldn't have been a first choice for me for a holiday. She had done this trip before but during the winter taking in the Christmas markets. We were going in June 2022. We decided to have 5 nights in Paris (where I'd been 5 times before) and 2 nights in Amsterdam where my friend lived for 2 years in her youth. We flew into Frankfurt... not because we wanted to but because these were the only flights we could get but we worked with it. Remember great deal! So ok, a short (5hr), fast ride on the ICE/TGV trains got us to Paris eventually (one was late which missed the connection to the earlier TGV but there was one a bit after). We knew that w

YFASMA - Fabric shopping in Athens

I promised this post in March! Fabrics from Euro1 per metre! I didn't buy anything in this shop but there was some lovely fabrics. I did buy the green and pink one above on the right. A satin finish rayon. It is lovely. There was a lot of lovely fabrics in this shop. It wasn't cheap Euro 8 p.m. but I didn't have a lot of room in my bag and I wanted something I would really love. I also didn't buy anything in Paris this time. I did buy the fabric for a table cloth just across the way from this shop. I also bought some orange/white weave linen fabric for Euro 4 p.m. at another shop, which I think I'll make some summer trousers with. As I was going to the airport, I saw this dress on the platform and I really liked it. Very easy to do too, I went to the Benaki Museum while in Athens. There is actually 2 locations. In this one I saw lots of Greek and Cypriot cultural crafts. This was a bridal bed in Crete. There was lots of clothing, embroidery and gold jewellery.

The saddest dress, then a few more.

Well hello. It's been a while. It was 8 months from the last post to the previous one to that and it's a bit longer this time. The last day I wrote was 10 Jul 2021. On 12 July my son and I were finally seeing Tim Minchin after booking it before we went to Europe at the end of 2019. It was going to be April 2020, but changed a few times and although it was a school night (year 12 for Alex) we went for dinner and sat in the show. My Mum had gone to hospital that morning and my sister was still at the hospital with her. Just after interval I got a message on my phone, "get to the hospital now". So we raced out and to the hospital where. although it was a lockdown and no visitors allowed, all 10 of us were allowed to see Mum as she was end of life. I won't go into the whole thing but Mum didn't die that night, but because of lockdown, we were not allowed to go and see her until a week and a half later when we were allowed just to discuss palliative care. By the n

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