Visiting Friends

I've had a couple of trips out to visit friends and their families lately.

Last Sunday I drove south for an hour (yes, I drove!) to visit Jo and her baby boy, Nye. Jo and I studied together at Adelaide Uni and she now lives in Sydney, so it was great to catch up with her and meet Nye for the first time.

 

Nye's a cute little smiley baby and even though he hadn't been sleeping, he wasn't grizzly at all and when I got to have a cuddle, he was very giggly and alert. Unfortunately there were no grins for the camera.

EDIT: Jo sent me these photos of Nye and me. Now you can see him smiling (and me pulling silly faces to make him giggle).

On Australia Day, in 2008, baby Giorgia entered the world. So this year on Australia Day, we celebrated her 3rd birthday. There were party hats and of course a cake with three candles.

Daddy helped to blow out the candles

 

Jenson was a big fan of the cake

It's Hot!

It's been very hot here today. Our Indoor/Outdoor thermometer said that it reached 51 degrees Celcius outside in the sun today. Fortunately it only got to 25 inside. Thank goodness for air conditioning and double glazing!

The perfect food for such hot weather is BBQ, so I whipped up some Persian Lamb Kebabs from Saraban  by Greg and Lucy Malouf and a chickpea salad. YUM!

Excursions over Christmas

Over Christmas we went on a number of family outings. It's taken me a long time to finally upload the photos from the camera, but here they are at last. 

First up is a family trip to the zoo with Paul's parents and his middle brother.

The new (since we were last there) Wild Sea exhibit was pretty awesome and we got there in time to see the seals getting fed and the keeper introduce all the seals to us.

This Monkey had a baby. Can you see it?

I'm not very keen on the butterfly house because all of these insects keep flying at my face. But I did brave it and came out with a couple of pretty photos.

This orangutan was hiding from the crowds. At first I didn't want to take her photo because she was looking so shy, but then I got an awesome position and she was so gorgeous.

 

 

The next outing was down the Mornington Peninsula. This is at Arthur's Seat Lookout and Flinders' Cairn lookout.

Afterwards we met up with friends at Red Hill Brewery and then tasted some wines at Red Hill Winery and 10 Minutes by Tractor.

Our final excursion over this time was with Candice and Jono to visit my boss' cherry farm at Wandin (anyone else thinking A Country Practice?). Len gave us a tour of the farm in his 4WD and it is awesome. We ate cherries fresh from the tree and then, as they were a little understaffed that day, we helped sort some cherries.

We ventured on to Elmswood Winery for an antipasto platter for lunch and some more wine tasting.

That brought us to the end of our holidays. We have been busy with other things since then - some of which I've already posted about and some of which I will post about shortly.

Landscaping is complete

We had the garden landscaped at the beginning of the week, so now our courtyard and front gardens are complete. It's so nice to have them done. I just wish it would stop raining so we could go outside and enjoy them!!

Here are some pictures of the finished product.

The bbq is now in front of the kitchen window. At some stage we might turn that into a servery, but we'll see.

In a little alcove in the wall, we have a feature bit of corrugated iron that we'll train jasmine up.

Our planter box contains herbs and a lemon and lime tree that will be espaliated to cover the fence.

Our wall boxes contain succulents.

Our front garden contains a tree and some little grassy things, but not big ugly grassy things.

And finally, the seeds that I planted on Sunday have already sprouted!! It's been pouring with rain in Melbourne so I had to bring them in and put them in the bathroom. I think the afternoon sun and damp conditions have really worked for them.

I'm so excited to have a garden at last - especially a kitchen garden of sorts.

A resolution of sorts

I know I said I don't do resolutions, but... if I was going to have a resolution it would be this:

I'm going to try my best to tone down my competitive nature this year and I'm going to try not to keep arguing my point. I know that I'm right and that should be enough. I don't have to change the opinions of everyone and fight to the death until they agree with me. I know it goes against everything in my nature and my genetics, but I think I would be a happier person if I got rid of these two awful habits of mine.

That is all.

Our first step to becoming self-sufficient

Okay, I'll admit, we're a very long way from being self-sufficient and will probably never get there, but we have decided to attempt to grow some veggies.

We bought some pots that fit on our tiny, previously-useless balcony along with some seedlings and seeds and today we planted them out. So far we have leeks, silverbeet, winter-harvest broccoli and brussel sprouts. 

The landscaper starts on our back and front yards tomorrow. I can't wait for that to be finished!

I've started putting up my photos of my project 365. So now you can look here to see my daily photos.