Sweets for the Sweet!

Morning tea at Leesa's and visiting her baby girl twins, this was a couple of weeks ago, I visited to give the girls a belated Christmas present. Leesa always bakes/makes something delicious and made this treat for us. I like to think very fresh and healthy and decadent and bad at the same time. Oh well.

 fresh berries, cream, vanilla bean paste, elderflower cordial and then some from 

Jamie Oliver's Thirty Minute Meals

The twins' room

I missed having a girl of my own so take delight in my friend's girls and 

all of the sugar and spice that goes along with them.

 ••• Kate •••

  ••• Rose •••

 A pair of owls made for the girls by Leesa's friend Toni who made this owl!

Addie & Ella Play Teaparty from Gelati Art

 Leesa's Baby Cardie ~ about thirty something years old....

 Belle!

 Blythes, I have been introduced but I have forgotten their names!

Sew Cute dolls found at The Collective Store

On my latest visit to Wynnum I discovered The Collective Store. {loving the website illustrations!}

It houses a fabulous collection of handmade crafty goodies, all of a very high quality and beautifully displayed. I was pretty happy because I wanted to get something special for the twins and actually had a hard time narrowing it down to these cutesy dolls. Good to have a place to go for handmade at any time, without having to wait for a market to pop up or buying online.

Australia Day

A small selection of Australiana that I love...

haunting  

 still in love with love my way ~ makes me want to live and err drink alcohol because everyone always has a glass in their hand.

you must read this to your children/yourself ~ I have trouble reading this aloud, 

especially towards the end, "Mummy why are you crying?"

 at least one bbq today, probably two. No one will look as cool as the guy in the apron.

 Fourex, Milton, Brisbane, Queensland ~ is iconic but I don't drink it

pascall fruit bon bons tin, manufactured in Tasmania, introduced to me when I was little by my Nan

 ~ so yummy

previous bbq picture and this one, a page from the book you can just see above 

~ Golden Circle Tropical Recipe Book.

Golden Circle is famous for it's tinned pineapple. I think every recipe in this book uses tinned pineapple therefore is fantastic! This picture above is Pineapple Ice-Box Cake

My backyard is has a large lawn, a hills hoist, an outdoor laundry, a swing set ~ half broken, a tin shed for the lawn mower, a chain wire fence, an outdoor table setting which badly needs oiling, and old besser brick bbq, a macadamia tree, and orange tree, a grape vine growing wildly up a bottle brush tree and a mango tree. You can see the mango tree in the back of this photograph.

I love mangoes I think they taste like sunshine! I have yet to sample the mangoes as we haven't yet had a season since I moved in. I will let you know if they are any good. It is a good tree for climbing though!

An excerpt from Mangoes by Australian Poet Richard Tipping,

"mangoes are tangible sensual intelligence

mangoes are debauched antisocialites

mangoes are a positive good in the world

mangoes like poetry"

My little big Grade 1er

Packed the little man off to grade one today. I wasn't teary but I didn't quite like it. He's growing up, which is obviously the desired outcome when one has children but it's hard to let go of the idea of them being your little babies. I was kidding myself that he was still my baby last year when he was in prep, that was stretching it, but now I really do have to face the fact that he's a big school boy.
Only grade one though, plenty of time to grow up yet.

The closest thing I got to being creative this weekend was making these school book labels. Which was fun. I took some photos of my 80's eraser collection and fed that into my computer...
I also did some really quick ones with the boys' names on them. I have a gadget which makes things into stickers called a xyron - it's cool!
Lukey helped me make the tags into stickers and hey presto, personalised book labels at about five times the cost and one hundred times more effort than shop bought ones but hey it's all about the journey right....
I will say it was a lot easier than the contacting of the school books but as I am keeping this blog a positive and family friendly place I won't go into that here. A saving grace was that a friend kindly dropped over a pile of plastic book covers which I could use on a few of the books. Will definitely be getting more of those instead of contact next year.

 got this sheet printed out at office works 

cut out each label

feeding the label into the xyron

ready to stick on to books!

Capturing the Flood

Casey is a guy I met at college ~ he takes some stunning photographs and these recent ones taken during the floods have captured his part of town and where he works in a beautiful way.

"Recently the beautiful city of Brisbane was struck with its worse flood since 1974, wiping out the majority of Ipswich and some of the most iconic points of the CBD, unfortunately a lot of homes were destroyed, people left stranded and at the worst, lives lost. My heart goes out to all who were affected by the tragedy and hope for you all to find your feet as soon as possible. These photos are to tell a story to not only those involved in mother nature's course but to those who were not granted the chance to experience the emotions that came with this unfortunate disaster."  ~ Casey

Check out Casey's Flood Photos and more of his work here. Thanks for being cool and sharing these with me Casey x Ains

• I have just added another helpful link to "saving your flood damaged photographs". 

RGB Digital Pro Lab with their suggested method for cleaning individual photographs 

and whole albums.

                                                                                                   

Handmade Owls

I visited my friend Leesa last week and as usual she always has some sort of treat to show me or feed me when I get to her house besides her two little scrumptious baby girl twins.
And as I can't go past an owl without looking twice I was pretty impressed by this little guy.
A very talented friend of hers has made this beautiful owl. She has embroidered, painted, stitched and I don't even know what else but he was so gorgeous I had to share. He is going to be a gift for another friend who has just had a baby boy this week amidst all the flooding.

Aren't the details amazing! I love the buttons too!

Toni has done several of these that I have seen { Leesa has twin owls for her girls} and as she does something different every time I will be looking forward to see what she does next.

Here are some more really good links if you would like to do something. I know most people wanted to go out and physically help clean up however were unable to.

Perhaps you will find something here that will be appropriate for you to get involved with.

Daydream Lily ~ Auctions, fundraising and other flood related links

Meet Me At Mikes ~ Queensland Floods : Ways to help

BrisStyle's ~ Handmade Ark Flood Appeal

and... because you got to eat ~ Baked Relief  has coordinated bakers with places to go to supply baked goods and cool drinks to clean up volunteers. This epic and very practical site is the place to go if you would like to donate baked goods and or your time to distribute them.

I am amazed by people!

This photograph was taken about a week before Christmas. I was visiting a friend who's daughter had made a sign for their flooded back yard. We were all concerned about the effects of the weeks and weeks of rain we had been having... little did we know.

As the flood water recedes

Here are some photographs taken by my friend Leesa in the city and New Farm 
after the flood waters receded.

This strip of the river is always bustling with cyclists, joggers, serious walkers, market shoppers, tourists, and city workers on their lunch break.

Seeing the river board walk being broken apart and pushed down the river by tugs was very sad. 

Leesa, myself and another friend met up there for a weekly walk whilst I was still pregnant with my now six year old and then after he was born. We each had a little one in a pram and we used to powerwalk from New Farm around to the city and back whist inevitably talking and laughing heaps. 

The houses along the bank made us curious and wonder at the happenings inside them 

and I for one was jealous of their inhabitants.

Apparently my baby was good whilst Leesa's squawked the whole way, I had forgotten that.

And, naturally we always ended up at Moray St Cafe for a coffee and some delicious breakfast. They had a very superior kind of fruit toast {which also happened to be the cheapest thing on the menu} which had gigantic pieces of fig and apricot and nuts in it!

Since then I often took my boys along there on bikes or scooters whilst I attempted to jog 

but I hadn't been in a while.

I will look forward to it being rebuilt and although I always really appreciated what a beautiful shimmery breezy spot it was I will love it just a little bit more.

all photographs from Leesa Perry Photography