Snow Day on Mt Donna Buang

Only an hour from where I live I can go up a mountain and see SNOW! This is the first real snow I've seen (once having been to Mt Dandenong to see a sprinkling of snow which was very exciting at the time). To be able to do it with Mum, Dad, and Lucia was amazing since none of them have seen snow either. Matt is an old hand, but he enjoyed himself too.

Crafting - Drawing on Sandpaper

Firstly, I love libraries! You can request them to deliver any book you choose right to your local library. So I had Art Lab for Little Kids sent to the Healesville Library and Lucia and I launched straight into some new creative time.

I have always found crayons a bit useless, they're waxy and the colour doesn't transfer well to paper. We have always used pastels, oil pastels, markers and chalk instead and then voila the great idea of drawing with crayons onto sandpaper. It grates the colour right in, which means you get good colour transfer.  Then you can flip it over and iron onto a fabric! I had some bags left from an embroidery project that we did a test run on and it worked a treat (other than my drawing the y in lucy backwards)!

A year later... wtf where did that go :)

We are not amused

Just kidding :) It's all good!

Helping Mum out in the Kitchen

I said to her, can you help Mumma by popping this into the bowl and she proceeded to put each piece into the bowl going 'pop, pop, pop'. Things are pretty literal when you're almost two. It looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, but she did proceed to throw the majority of the rest of those veggies on the floor when I ducked to the loo. I couldn't be mad though, she was just entertaining herself and it did look pretty. 

Warm Feet Mumma

This will tickle the fancy of handknit lovers and baby lovers alike. Lucia is learning so fast, in a learning curve that you can't believe until you are in close proximity to a child and can observe it for yourself. She has a plethora of words and adds new ones every day. At least two or three that I hear her say and who knows how many others that she uses to other people. Today she was looking at my hand knit jitterbug socks and I said aren't they soft and squishy and we were squishing them for awhile and she said "Warm Feet Mumma". Truer words could not be said, because there is nothing as nice as slipping a pair of handknitted socks on to your feet for warm toasty toes (okay okay ugg boots are pretty warm too, but not as pretty).

Staying Cool on a Hot Hot Day

Environmentalists please look away. I know that this is a waste of water but it was so hot! It was so much fun!!! It reminded me of the fantastic days of home made slip and slides and running under the sprinkler for hours. Beautiful hot summer days, where it was so exciting when your friends Mum came out of the house with a tray full of cut up watermelon when you were exhausted from making wirlpools in the above ground pool.

Epicly Cute

Summer Fruit is here!

Lucy is digging her first cherries and has also recently been devouring cheap mangoes, watermelon, nectarines, blackberries and peaches. Yay for summer!

Alowyn Gardens

If you are venturing out to the Yarra Valley for a day then don't just go to the wineries make a detour to see the beautiful Alowyn Gardens near Yarra Glen. Even as locals it has taken us a LONG time to get to these gardens but they were worth the wait. The garden is seperated into different garden 'rooms' with the ubiquitous parterre garden, some foresty areas, great little windy paths that lead to sculpture and water features. Matt and I are always particularly interested in food gardens and Alowyn has a beautifully designed kitchen garden with avenues of apples, crabapples, quinces and what not. In the picture above Matt and Lucy are framed by the wisteria and rose covered arbor. A great place to go for a nice walk to burn off the winery indulgences.

Tesselaar Tulip Festival

Today we went to the tulip festival on the penultimate day. The tulips were a bit blown but some were still at their peak and even fully open they're stunning planted on mass. It's beautiful to see these wonderful flowers in the ground doing their thing rather than as cut flowers. There were amazing collections of other flowers too, irrisistable were the poppies... Lucy found them a little too irrisitable as well as I parked her a little too close for this photo and she nabbed one.


We missed going on the weekend when it was family day, but having the place to ourselves held it's own charm and there was still a cute puppy bounding around, to Lucy's amusement and some stunt alpacas and a couple of alpaca breeders there to chat to about fleece and yarn.

There was awesome muzak duo (double bass/piano) playing for our amusement and they busted out into a bit of Wiggles and Bananas in Pyjamas for Lucy although she's not quite old enough to appreciate that they were for her and she was a little more interested in the jazz numbers they played before and after (and the ABBA too).

We brought some Peonies and Tuber Roses to start our own cottage garden so wish us luck.

Bubba Updates

First hair do by Mum

Good times at the park!

Three Generations

Almost one year?

I can't believe that it's been almost one year since our little girl was born. She is without a doubt the best thing that Matt and I have ever created. We are gearing up for her first birthday party, which people have been 'pooh poohing' saying that she won't remember it so we shouldn't make a fuss, but we want to make a GIANT fuss of the fact that our lives have changed for the better and that we god damn survived the first year without screwing things up too badly.

So bring on the GIANT birthday and three cheers for not screwing up :)

Our Light Lucia

mmmmm frothy

Lucy had her first bubbacino and check out this look of absolute delight...

We were at Mocha and Lime in Healesville, which is an amazing cafe I heartily endorse it if you want somewhere to eat when visiting. They buy the best produce, free range eggs and bacon, so you can eat without feeling bad for the animals. They have free wifi and a fireplace. Last weekend was market weekend and it was flat out and they had a band (TK and Rose) who were cheerful bedreaded guitarist/ukeleleists. When they first got up I thought we would have to leave because it would be too loud for Lucy, but they weren't and she LOVED it. Banging her spoon on the table in time with the music. So I'm keen to seek out more live music for her to enjoy.

Reading with Grandpa Fred

Lucia takes her reading seriously!

Mother's Day

For my first Mother's Day I got the best present EVER. A sleep in :) and then Matt made me my favourite breakfast of fried ham and eggs (usually saved for Christmas morning). Lucia is very sleepy today which I think is a combination of the weather (it's turned very cold) and fighting off a dreaded lurgy. I look forward to many Mother's Days of burnt breakfasts, early morning snuggles and crappy gifts from the school mother's day stall, because you can never have too many porcelain heart shaped containers with bad rose transfers on the top.

Gaming it's srs bizness, srsly.

Got to start em early to get a gaming prodigy :)

Bam Bam :)