Spooktacular

'Fly fly spider' or if you're our resident superman ghost 'spider spider fly'

Devlin had his 6th birthday party on Saturday (last) the 9th of October.
Since having parties at functions seemed to be expensive, this year I decided to host them at home; that and we wanted to do the fun games and things :).

Blythe the zombie 'I heart brains' tip o the hat to plants vs. zombies. Jackkellington.

So we had Blythe's here, which was about twice as much to fund then going out somewhere! We'd already promised Devlin one so I thought 'well, this will be the last for some years then!'. He'd picked out his cake first - a pumpkin with snakes so the theme followed along - the Haunted House and straight after he decided it would be fancy dress and he would be a spider.

Mr creepy crawly himself. Took me about 5 hrs to make it, not sure why.. it was the very first time I'd used a sewing machine - to make the legs - that was fun :). Stuffing them took at least 1 hour, they were so thin, I watched Burn Notice while doing that, and then sewing the joints on the legs and lastly sewing fishing line to the sleeves and the legs so they would wave up and down in unison to the sleeves, that was my proudest feature ;).

I spent many days planning the party to the absolute last detail and 1 and a half day preparing for it! Suffice it to say the hour previous to the party was spent in a manic flurry and the party started while I was still getting stuff done!
The result was half the food didn't get made, I didn't dress up, Mum and the kids did the decorating and I totally forgot the lollies for the loot bags lol.

A rare two faced brain eating clown abbzombie of the cutest kind.

Even so, the party was a big success, we had 13 kids (9 declined the invitation.. that's huge) and some mums stayed in the wings to watch. Because of the rain, the outside activities were cancelled and we all stayed squished in the lounge room.

A big sister with her own awesome costume, Amywitch and a seriously creepy mask, mr Goul.

After 2 hours of yelling and hosting continuous games I was ready to 'go home' :p. I'd run out of games too! I've always had parties for 3 hours before -unlike most others which are 2 hours- not sure what was different this time. We made up some more games and had some food then passed the parcel; had cake and before we knew it the third hour was well and truly up.

Aformentioned musthave cake, eyeball eggs, 'blob' merangues (or failed to stand up ghost merangues lol), chocolate crackle spiders and some brain triffle!

We played 'fly, fly, spider' (duck duck goose); zombie tag (I'd sewn a blindfold inside a monster mask for 'marco polo'); monster mash (statues); monster rely (acting called out monsters), bang charades (wrote down - and drew pictures - of various scary things, put them in blown up balloons [except we didn't have time for that lol, so they were drawn out of a witch hat] and then the child would act out the thing to a chorus of guesses); creepy crawly (hands and feet rely race).....

Lukenstien.

.....mummy hop (in pairs, one would wrap the other with crepe/tissue paper but not their arms and when they finished the roll the other would hop to the finish line); Frankenstien (I'd cut out millions of foam bits for arms, legs, feet, hands, bodies and heads; the kids had to use a straw to carry each foam bit to their paper and then sticky tape them into a frankenstien); scary sets (I'd drawn and cut out 8 types of pictures, stuck them to fabric and tapped the fabric to each child's back; the idea was that they had to collect one of each picture while protecting their backs, unfortunately the fabric wouldn't stay on).


After that we did some thinking on our feet and played murder wink, corners, and more statues this time with 'who can freeze in the scariest of posses or expressions'.


Mum had come and helped me (done most of!) clean on Friday and then after the party had stuck around tidying up for me. After 3 hrs sleep Friday night I was so glad of her help, I just wanted to go to bed. I couldn't stand the floor though, it was like walking on a spider web, it was so sticky. I didn't mind what got done but the floor was vacumned and mopped forth with!

Rebeccarella, a detachable arm vampire and Joshuarrrrrrrrrr.

Everyone had fun and apart from the last hour previous to the party I didn't freak out much heh, and the house got back to normal pretty quick after wards too. I bought the Women's Weekly cake book number 2 this week and don't tell anyone but I'm looking forward to the next party ;).

An Avant-guard Antediluvian Photo Feast

After years of promising, we finally made it to the Abbey Medieval Festival this year. We knew it was soon but in true us style we heard it had arrived at 12:30am that morning. After playing board games all night with some friends they invited us to go along with them and since we'd been invited by our good friend Mr Cheery to watch his fencing company, Prima Spada, for the last two years, we thought we would!


Phill volunteered his presence to my surprise as he is not into spectating.. anything, but came for the company. It was a good hour after our arrival and we'd watched the opening ceremony of all the houses and clans parade and we'd found Mr Cheery's band and saw the different fighting styles incorporating each weapon - rapiers, broadswords, bucklers etc. It was the highlight of the day actually, for me, with or without an inside friend. They danced around each other very skillfully and each different weapon changed the whole technique. It wasn't until after their performance since the kids had been distracting with their need to be fed, watered and toileted that I remembered my camera! And suddenly the whole day opened up before me like petals, wow, what an absolute feast for photographic opportunities.

The village blacksmith. There's something about working with raw materials that always appeals, glass, wood and metal. In its simplest form it can be a creation of great practicality and beauty.


I regret two things: that I didn't get to take photos of the first Prima Spada display and that I missed the archery tournament. I really liked this picture of the quivers, you can't tell but I painstakingly selected and blurred out the background.
Blythe was most intrigued with this game but kept getting smashed. With a little help from daddy she manage to snatch a win.


There was a mock battle with several different companies at once. They were very careful with their weapons, with a tap here and suddenly a body on the ground, but it was pretty entertaining.
The festival was quite large, this wide shot captured only about a third of one side and only half its width.


There were safety boundaries everywhere including around the main field so it was hard to get a shot of anything without posts or sting somewhere. I liked the little glimpses of details I could capture zooming in instead of taking a larger picture with interference.


We saw a falconry display with a spitfire, peregrine, owl and eagle! The falconer would launch the bird and then swing a lure around and around. One of the birds required a bit of enticement, it seemed quite happy up in the trees. The owl was the best, it was particular about rabbits and the falconer would drag a stuffed bunny by rope along the ground until the owl pounced. It was a minute or two before the falconer stopped dragging the bunny during which time the owl happily perched on the bunny bumping over the ground. It would only release after it had received its treat!

The eagle was too large to fly in this arena, which was quite large itself, but what a beautiful creature. Now I have met a person with longer hair then me too lol, a man to boot.








There were many ironic images, of which I love to take the most; two conflicting subjects or ideas married in a balanced capture. There were also lots of lovely little details. I really enjoy capturing an atmosphere.


The joust was the big highlight for the family, I know the kids liked it the best. They really developed at atmosphere of excitement and there were lots of cheering and Oooos and broken lance ends flying through the air.


Click on any images to see them in their larger glory :).


Yes I did try, yes I did totally suck :D. I loved the combination of Phill on the stilts with his funny walk shirt on.


On guard! We fortunately caught the end of Prima Spada's second and last performance and I whipped out the camera. This one was of a renaissance duel between the Maestro and Michael; much flair was included and some cheating too.


Once the blackguard had revealed his hand, or in this case his hidden dagger the Maestro's second was incensed and joined in the fray with Michael's second.


And so no offensive comments about gentlemen, goats or barmaids shall prosper!


I am already looking forward to next year :). The kids want to dress up and I'll get to spend as much time taking photos as I want, I've already told poor Phill he's not coming, we'll see how much the kids let me do. Considering they were 'soo bored' to begin with, they didn't want to leave.

Vancouver; Soggy Jewel of Canada

After Vancouver Island we decided to check out the Space Center and Astronomy Tower and jumped on a bus at a stop I found in my rambles. Alas it wasn't so simple, 3 buses later and few wrong turns we made it across the bridge and found out it was closed on Mondays (and it was getting later and dark by then). So we had hot drinks at Starbucks (of course), Mum tried some mulled apple juice and we made our way back. Unfortunately the toys the kids had gotten at the bug zoo were lost on this excursion. Blythe had a squishy worm; Devlin had a large life like tarantula.. which he left under a seat on the bus; I'd love to see how it gets discovered! XD


Mum kindly took the kids home from the bus stop and I got unleashed to shop! shop shop!! I bought some shoes, naturally, and looked in every shop for cheap kids snow boots. Picked up some bubble tea and ate the rest of the high tea cakes while finishing off my Christmas cards and postcards; I thought it would be fun to post them from Canada to my Aussie friends as a surprise :).


Vancouver Island and then this trip really took it out of Mum so she had a good opportunity to rest up for a few days before we had our big Rocky Mountain adventure. So the kids and I purchased a two day pass on the Tourist Trolley Bus (tram) which you could hop on and off on its loop around the city all day long. The tour guides were very informative, even apart from the travel convenience it was worth it just for the guides.


We got instructions from our driver and hopped off in Chinatown, feeling brave as we'd heard it was a dangerous place with the druggies and homeless, and caught a skyrail to Science World which was thronged with school groups. It was well worth it with heaps of hands on activities and games and areas with different themes. It was also very informative for those inclined to read the info, which meant mostly adults :p. The best part were the live performances they held every hour or two which were performed by a different grad student/volunteer who would give it on different properties - we caught the end of a turbulence/air/smoke show and saw the bubble/soap film show.

This contraption was just awesome, it released balls from the top which would be randomly pushed, dropped, scooped down, around, onto chimes, drums, xylophone, etc; it was perpetually in motion and sound.
Cameras showed how you would look with a symmetrical face = two lefts or two right sides, goes to show asymmetry is beautiful. (not showing you mine :P)
With all our layers and bags on Blythe was the weight of a giant octopus, Devlin a wolverine and I a komodo dragon.
The performer encased (albeit briefly) people in giant bubbles!

We learnt about pollution and green impact; about push and pull, pulleys and weight; about light and sound and movement; about asymmetry, Canadian animals and various physics and visual illusion. Blythe went for a lone exploration and when I found her I was not impressed which dampened the playtime fun somewhat and because I wasn't sure when the trams would finish running I was worried and rushing; which was a huge shame because it was the perfect place to let the kids loose to have some fun.


When we caught a train back I got the instructions wrong anyway and after getting off at the wrong stop we ended at the top of Robson street with no bus in sight. Being me I thought, no worries, we'll just walk and the kids were very stoical, especially after being fed. We bought some kids snow boots on the way back too!


The next day, back on the trolley, we went through Stanley Park, saw a canon that fires at 9pm sharp every night, a statue to a runner, the Olympic rings barge, the girl in a wetsuit statue and the Lionsgate Bridge. We saw a tree you could fit a small car into and part of the devastation caused in 2006 ( 45 hectares leveled in hours!) - they left an area unrestored as a reminder and to allow the natural process of recovery.

Canada's Olympic symbol.
The most popular beach, Second beach, used to have benches but they kept mysteriously disappearing at night. To save expense and to stop furnishing peoples lawns the council replaced the benches with these mammoth logs... they're still there :).
There's a kids water play park including a kids dryer!
Snapshot of some of the devastation.

We saw a lot of squirrels which was very exciting, I mean.. we've never seen them before and Dev was saying "squirrel!" every time, so I agree this would get a bit annoying! But our second driver took his job very seriously and asked me to keep my kids under control. I understand his annoyance, but considering the continuous changes with sleep, food, environment, weather and comfort I was very very proud of my kids, they were real champions, they were very well behaved.

Best shot I could get of the totems; there are 7 (?) to represent each of the First Nations Tribes.
An eagle's nest, they're massive!
Girl in a wetsuit which gets decorated with lingerie annually by college students.
Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel!

We went to Granville Island today and headed to the Kids Market first. As it was our last day in Vancouver I was hoping to knock over a bunch of things by getting on and off the tram. The Kids Market was a 2 storey building filled with kid shops; there were dress ups, clothes and shoes, raincoats and boots and coats (a whole shop just for those - only in Canada!), scrapbooking, photographing, a climbing maze of tubes and ball pit, an arcade, a cafe, jewellery, baby clothes and accessories, toys toys and toys - wooden toys, dolls, board games, building sets, science sets, stuffed animals, puppets, you name it!! The kids got to pick one thing each that would the the toy I'd buy them for the trip. Dev got a stretchy bus as long as his arm and Blythe got a plush pony that made galloping sounds.

The kids had a play in the maze (which was called Adventureland heh) while I did some important stamp shopping ;). Then we went on the hunt for a silk shop I thought would be a good candidate for shirt shopping for my brother (he'd asked me to keep an eye out for work shirts since Vancouver is the place to shop!). No luck there, but we did find genuine french chocolate filled croissants and comforted ourselves with those ;). An important discovery was some waterproof shoes I liked! They were gumboots with koi fish (which I wore for the rest of the trip.. forget that they had no insulation at all lol and my feet froze, I looked good freezing ;)).

Home, sweet home. There's a lot of homeless in Vancouver, being the warmest city in Canada. The chair quotes "retired, and working part time as a know-it-all" :).

We went up and down the streets vainly looking for this silk shop and missed out on touristing, I looked up the tram times worriedly and there was one due in 10 mins, the stop was 15 mins away; we RAN. Me dragging a crying 5 year old, lol, oh what a sad scene we reached a street length away and saw the tram pulling away. "Wait!" lol, waving frantically and running, the fellow kindly stopped and waited while we huffed through the door and collapsed. It was our helpful and friendly first tram driver who told us we were looking at the wrong time table and there were no trams after this one.. it was the last!!
Since it was the last it terminated in Gastown so we could walk (ahahahahaha), catch a taxi for $30 or he volunteered to drive us to our door in his spare time for $5, what a guy!
Unfortunately I'd run out of money, lol, so I gave him $5 and what I could scrounge of all my change for a tip (hopefully close to $5).

Blurry Chinatown lamp. Rice World! Every Chinatown must have one.
Friendly French fellow with a gazillion pretty dogs.
Blythe driving the Trolley Bus.
Inside the Trolley.

We arrived in time to chat to Mark on the phone, he'd tracked us down, he also roused on me for letting Mum get out of bed at all and diagnosed her with swine flu.

We had to pack, book out and I wanted to exchange Blythe's snow boots for ones with grip, shirt shop for Mark and grab us dinner! I achieved all of this in time (albeit with more running), found exactly the shirts I imagined in the 8th shop (the girl at the counter - in Guess - checked me out in simmering malice, lol!! how dare I shop there with no makeup, hair a mess, gumboots and flaky raincoat! XD).

Caught a taxi to the train station and found my bag was 10kg too heavy.. hmm too many shoes, woops. Mums was exactly 10kg light :), so after Mum bribed the counter lady with tim tams ;) we got a golf cart escort to the Pacific sleeper at 7:30pm, ate cold dinner, tucked kids in and got to sleep in my own bed without a kid shawl for the first time that week!

Next post: Adventure through the Rockies!!

Water, Bridge and the Gold Coast

I found my camera! It had been missing for a week, so you missed out on dramatic shots of us angst and nit ridden; a near 2 meter carpet snake in our driveway and various school holiday antics.

We still have nits (we think), its paranoia central here, this is the first time the kids have had them - they always love my long, clean, healthy hair - but its also the first time they've been resistant to oil and essential oil treatments.
So after some internet and soul searching I decided to do the insecticide treatment :( and that was sad.. after all the organic food and chemical avoidance's and we go ahead and spray it on the skin sigh. Well we've got another treatment to go next week, lets hope that's the end of it!

My head hair is now long past the small of my back and I was very close to shaving it instead of treating it, kids weren't very amenable to shaving theirs off though :D!

Bits of news include enrolling the kids in the last 2 months of soccer and I've started cooking nearly every night in an attempt at being a 'real' wife :P. Oh and I started a new diet which is 'insulin reducing', so sugar, wheat, potatoe, banana, grape, rice (except basmati), dried fruit, fruit juice free. I haven't cemented the fine details of the diet yet, but its to be used in conjunction with a progesterone cream (of which I am severely deficient) and exercise!
So it looks like all my prayers are coming true in a scary and hard work necessitating way doh!!

So far I've made spelt spaghetti with sugar snap peas, zucchini, green onions, sausages and brollini; sweet potatoe mash and ah.. a middle cut of beef boiled in garlic thyme and wine which was actually reeeally yummy; and tonight we had sausages sweet potatoe hash brown and homemade tomatoe sauce baked beans :). Introducing even slightly alternative cooking to my picky family is, well, intimidating but, I'm hopeful :).

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

I thought I'd show you those Gold Coast shots that I actually blogged about months ago but never posted. So briefly (unlike my original draft ;)), Blythe had a reward chart which she completed over 6 months and her request was White Water World so I paired it up with a Bridge Congress (which is a huge annual Australian event) and we drove down Friday, went to WWW, stayed in a nice hotel; then the kids went home with Phill, Dad arrived and we played in the congress Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

The 'green room' was a single loop that shot you out into the huge funnel and so fast up the side that you think you're going to loop which is freaky as you're only sitting on a tube! And then gravity swings you up the other side and back and forth you go as you get funneled out the end! Although the green room had the biggest thrill, the orange one was much more fun because it had a shorter queue, heh, and went for four times as thrilling long.

It had been rainy and cold on the drive down and the kids prayed earnestly on the way and we decided to go and see (I'd packed other clothes and raincoats in case we went elsewhere!). As we arrived we could see the horizon shrouded in grey with a blue patch just above the park.. and.. it was even warmer.

Blythe and Daddy headed straight for the big stuff, while Dev and I went in search of 'squirting things'.

We found some squirting things.. apparently they weren't 'the ones' but nothing a bit of exploring, sun baking and general monkeying around couldn't fix.

I went on three big rides with Blythe which was pretty hilarious, I don't know why but I couldn't stop laughing, my mouth filling with water! We went on the Octopus first, I got stuck on the lip at the top, I felt like a flopping fish out of water! lying on my mat, trying to get unstuck!


Dev was scared stiff of 'The Bucket'; now this was one serious bucket!

Teh Bucket, nuff said.

There was a wave pool which was good fun, Dev and I spent most of the time there and playing with the camera. We left the big rides to Blythe and Daddy (and the queues!). Blythe and I floated in huge inflatable rings and when the waves started I got the giggles and when you're hanging nearly upside down its very hard to stop the giggles!


When we got cold we headed for the hotel and found Mantra on the Park on the forth time looping round the block and had some yummy Italian food.

The kids played 'Bang' and let us sleep in :). That's our room's view and there's some funky cafe decor.

We had 5 sessions of bridge that were about 4 hours long each; there were four sections: novice for under 100 points, restricted for under 300, open, and senior for those over 75 years I think (given that the average age of bridge players is about 70 that's not such a restrictive section ;p). Although I'd only been playing 2 and a bit years and had less then 50 points! Dad had nearly 200 so we were pegged in restricted. This was very intimidating! These players were either very good and had been playing for at least 4-5 years or were still good and had been playing for 10-20++ years!


How the points work: every time you play at a club it takes about 4 hours and you get a percentage, 50% meaning you got average on everything which is actually a decent score, anything more then 50 means you did better then most, so the top third at the session scores points. Depending on how many people are there it could be anything from 0.20 to 0.60 of a green point. In club competitions you get red points which are about 0.40 to 1 point ans then there's state and national competitions which are gold points which can get you twice as much as green or even more.

Over 2000 people played in the pairs event.
Sushi is Good.
Hordes of bridge players (ie: -mostly- retired, resort attired older folk) descend upon Broadbeach; we played 'pick the bridge player' :).

The first two sessions was to grade us, out of 126 pairs and we did pretty well and got into the "A" grade, got into the top 20 in fact. There was only one other pair from our club in Buderim so a little friendly encouragement (read: rivalry ;)) started, they came about third in the grading!

The first two sessions after that were a bit disheartening, mistakes happened, so did bad luck, and some arguing, we got 49% and 49%. This didn't do us any good on the competitive front or the relationship front.

I had some prayer and realised that we came to have fun and that my outlook was all wrong. This cheered me up :) and the next day I prayed that we have fun! oh and please God, I don't care about winning but please, please no more bad luck ;), we've had our share!

Well it was an odd day, the cards were extreme (they're always randomly dealt before hand) but we had decided to just have fun and the cards favoured us and so did luck. You could watch your progress being projected on the big screen throughout the day and we kept going up and up. Our poor compatriots kept going down and down although they'd been having a very good time coming in the top 5 and 10 previously. Suffice to say we came first by a large margin with a smashing 67.81% (actually 66.67% but there were two errors against us)! Our fellow Buderimites came 8th and what gracious fellows they are.
This big finish brought our poultry 16th place to 4th place overall! We got a shiny pen and $100 prize heh :). But I tell you what, we had fun ;) :p.

Our weekend netted us over 11 gold points.

We had some really yum food there, I highly recommend Valentino's for pizza, Oberoi's Taj Indian before 7pm - $10 dinner! Alto for breaky/brunch, pricier but good and best of all Sushi4U (lol) - sushi and yum cha - cheap and authentic!

Then we drove home in a deluge; that storm ended up flooding low areas and causing huge traffic and detours, fortunately we got home safe and sound. I took some really cool shots though.. something about driving at night in the rain with the glowing fuzzy reflecting lights is entrancing.

We went for a drive one morning and found this huge Asian super store... these looked like frogs eyes but turned out to be some lotus or sesame or otherwise innocent drink.
There were crowds on the beach waiting for the tsunami to arrive doh!!
Yum Cha is Good!
Rainy drive lights.

Summer Simple Pleasures

Or, upside down AU Winter snippet :)

As per Whirliegig's post I'm adding some snapshot memories.

These are the flourless chocolate cupcakes, featured in my recipe of the month, in their various stages: being stolen by Phill before I put the topping on, being iced (the cupcakes not Phill), smothered in cream cocoa and cinnamon.


This sunset is the most spectacular I've ever seen.. I chased it home all the way from work, barely looking at the road :p, it was a river of gold. Flecks of dove grey, pink and gold gathering into one clump of pure gold ripples ahh. The fluff ball clouds covered the entire sky from powder puffs to steaming banners on the other side. Was bitter sweet because I didn't make it to the camera in time, but here's the after glow: