Fun in Melbourne

We have just returned from a short 5 day holiday to Melbourne, a wonderful city on the east coast of Australia. It has the most beautiful old buildings and a rickety old tram system running through the city streets. We went with four of our friends (one who was celebrating her divorce!!!) and enjoyed lovely weather to take in some sight seeing, shopping, dining out and watching a couple of games of footy. We bought some great clothes at the Factory Direct Outlets and ate and drank far too much!

This is the view from our balcony. That is the football stadium directly across the water.


Melbourne’s famous city trams. These trams continually travel around the main city blocks and it’s just so easy to jump on and off when you want.

My mouth was watering just looking in this shop window. This shop was situated down the cutest little arcade.



Gorgeous flowers at the Queen Victoria Markets. I just love kale – I’ve been too busy this year to plant any!!


This is our table at the footy stadium. We were able to watch the game while we dined or we could wander outside and come back in when we wanted another drink or half time desserts. I could get used to this life!! Thanks to our son-in-law who was able to organise this for us!!

Melbourne is well know for having 4 seasons in one day but as you can see we had wonderful weather. The days were a little cool but without any heavy winds so just perfect for wandering around. On Friday night we were treated to a wonderful fireworks display above the dock and Sunday night nature provided some more fireworks with a thunderstorm.
This weekend was such a lovely time for us to share with our friends.
Tomorrow I am heading off to the city again to join my son, his fiance and Ann (Mother of the Bride) to attend a night of food and drink sampling in preparation for their wedding in March.

Suzy

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Weekend away!

I’ve just had the most wonderful weekend. My oldest sister turned 60 and we had a weekend of celebration!! We travelled to a gorgeous town on the south coast which is a famous tourist/wine growing area. Our whole family joined in for the weekend.

This is what we were expecting but……..unfortunately a cold front hit the coast and we had very rough weather. The first night we had terrible winds and heavy rain. We had 20 adults and 8 kids and had 3 houses – one for each family.

This was our house we shared with our three kids and their husbands/partner and 4 grandies. As our house was the biggest we all had dinner at our house. I notice the chairs on the deck have taken a tumble in the night.

This is one of my sister’s home for the weekend.

And this is where my other sister and her family stayed.
We had a fabulous time…lots of eating, drinking and being merry. We actually had our Xmas in July (yes, in September!) on Friday night which was a lot of fun.

Suzy

I’m joining SeasonalSunday@TheTablescaper

Fish & chips by the water

Well, tomorrow we head home to the farmhouse as I start work again on Tuesday….it’s not all sadness though as we will be back on Thursday evening for an extended weekend. We will do this for a few more weeks while the weather is hot. DNo 1 and her two boys came for a sleepover this week and we all went out for lunch. It was soooo hot it was unbelievable. We decided on fish and chips (not the best on a hot day but good holiday food none the less!!).

We certainly can’t have this at home!!! Actually I’m quite looking forward to getting home (did I say that??) and updating a few things around the house. I just need the weather to cool down a little before I take on any big projects.

                                Suzy

                    I’m joining SeasonalSunday@TheTablescaper

Yummy cakes to tempt you

Is it possible to gain weight through osmosis??? I am convinced it is. This is a wonderful cake shop I found on my recent holiday in Melbourne and I swear I did not eat one piece of this and I still have gained some (not sure how many cos I haven't looked!) unwanted kilos.  Maybe it had something to do with all the other wonderful food we ate or maybe even the yummy wines we drank......

Lemon meringue pie would have to be one of my favourites - how yummy do these look.

 Have a happy FoodieFriday@DesignsbyGollum

Suzy

Sweet, Sweet William

Once again we have had a busy

week...I am on school holidays so Mr FH and I went to Perth for a few appointments and also to WORK HARD!!!  We have a unit in Perth where our son and his girlfriend live and in March Perth got hit by a freak storm and three rooms of our unit were flooded!! Finally we had all the insurance sorted so it was time to get the new carpets laid..Yippee!! On Thursday we spent the whole day shifting furniture around from room to room. It was pouring with rain outside (I was worried about flooding again!) so we were unable to put anything outside so it was a matter of keeping in front of the carpet layer and just shifting things from room to room. It was hard work but well worth the effort. We came back to the farm last night and I have spent the day today just catching up. We are meeting our daughter and her husband and baby at our local pub for dinner tonight so that will be nice.

I bought myself this pretty bunch of Sweet William from the vegie store on the way home - the colours are just so lovely.

Hope you all have a great weekend - it is cold and miserable here in Australia so I hope you are all enjoying the nice sunny weather.

Suzy

PS A few people have asked me about the box of china I found - it was in the old farm house where my husbands parents lived so I guess you could say they are family heirlooms!

Weekend with the girls

I am having a weekend away!! In my family we have 8 girl cousins (I am the youngest!) and a few years ago we decided we would have a girls weekend once a year. This year is our 10th anniversary so we are heading to Kalgoorlie - a city famous for the gold mined around it. I have not been there since I was a child. It will take about 7 hours of driving to get there. We have hired a mini bus which we will drive ourselves - what fun it's going to be....

Every year we try to visit somewhere different and try different things - usually lots of shopping is included.

I am looking forward to seeing all the old building and the many, many pubs - left over from the gold mining hay day.

I will be back on Monday so hopefully I will have some stories to share.

Have a nice weekend...

Suzy

White sand

I have been scrolling through some photos I have on my computer and came across these gorgeous ones from a holiday Mr FH and I took a while ago. This is from along our southern coast line just near a large town called Esperance.

Esperance is about a 6 hour drive from the farm (that makes it about 9 hours from our capital city) but was well worth!! The beaches were unbelievable..

I have never seen such white, white sand and such blue water. We were told the sand is so white that it squeaks when you walk on it and guess what, it does!! It is amazing.

I'm sure it is the fact that this area is so remote that has kept it so beautiful.

There are many islands just off the coast that can be seen from the beaches.

This was one of best holidays we have had even though it was only for a few days.

Suzy

 

Holidays are over....

Well I am back after the most wonderful 10 days - this is the Athina which I cruised on with my Mum and my two sisters. We had the most lovely time - we don't ever just have the four of us (usually husbands, kids and grandkids are there!!) so it was very special to us all. We laughed so much, ate so much and talked so much - not a bad way to spend 8 days!! The Athina was a wonderful ship with fabulous staff to provide beautiful food and really fantastic cocktails!! The only downside we had was the weather - as we were south of Australia the wind was really gusty so we weren't able to sit on the sunlounges all day reading books as I thought I would be doing - we had facials, massages and afternoon snoozes instead.

We travelled to Adelaide by boat then hired a car and drove to the Adelaide Hills and the Barossa which is a very famous winegrowing area of South Australia.

These are some photos I took while walking around an old town called Hahndorf which is Australia's oldest surviving German settlement. It was a really beautiful town where I could easily live and settle into one of the many stone cottages we saw.

There are just so many wineries, cheese factories, chocolate factories and craft shops around this area it was just amazing.

Finally we flew back to Perth where I spent a couple of days catching up with D No1, S No1 and their partners and also my dear little grandson who is now walking!! I started back at work yesterday - we had a staff inservice all day so that was a great way to break ourselves in - students start on Monday so that will really mean the end of the holiday then!!

Until next time...

Suzy

I'm on holidays!!!

Today was my last day of work at school. It was so much fun - we had the class party for the students which was fabulous with lots and lots of yummy food then we did a little more work then once the students were gone we had staff nibbles and drinks. I feel like I have been eating all day.As we are such a small school we are able to do little extras to make the day really special for the students. I don't start work again until the end of January.
Last week I went to my craft wind-up and every year we have a challenge - this year we had to use the phrase Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue. Well, as usual I didn't get mine done until the last week - every year I swear I will get it done sooner but I don't know where the time goes. For my challenge I took the phrase as a wedding theme and made this cream satin cushion. The photo is of my parents on their wedding day 60 years ago. Sadly my father died many years ago but Mum lives in a nearby town. This is the only photo she has of their wedding as it was a time when money was very short (my kids cannot believe she has only one photo) so I decided to make this for her for Christmas. I scanned the photo and put it onto fabric then made up the cushion - I must say I am very happy with it and I am sure she will love it on Christmas Day.

I'm hoping to finish my Christmas shopping off this week and then it is only the food I need to sort out - I have lots of recipes I am wanting to try so must get organised tomorrow.

Suzy