There are some days when you just realise how fortunate you are to live in such a beautiful city. Sunday was one of those days for me.
While walking with family members who were busily involved in a community Pokemon day I got distracted and rediscovered the beautiful statues and flowers in Ballarat’s Botanical Gardens.
CLICK HERE for some facts on this fabulous statue and pavilion.
Next some photos of the beautiful Begonias in the conservatory which was open and free. The Begonia Festival was held only a couple of weeks ago so the flowers and gardens are still at their peak.
Hope you enjoyed the photos. If you get a chance to visit the gardens now is still a lovely time of the year.
Lorraine
I have been meaning to show you the gifts my dh brought me from Nepal. He came home about a week ago and I kept forgetting to show you some of the hand-made paper and cards he thoughtfully brought for me.
This is only a small portion of the hand-made goodies. Below is one of the shops he looked in for paper products.
I’ll show you just a couple of photos from this amazing place. The first is dh’s group starting their trekking to the destination.
A very welcome rest.
Some of the spectacular scenery along the way.
This beautiful sunset is taken over the roof of the school which was their destination. They were helping with some building works.
Back in Kathmandu. A popular form of transportation even in the main streets.
I have seen all of his photos and I must admit I’m a little envious, but then I stop and think of the trekking required and I realise I’m not envious at all 😆 just very proud of him.
Bye for now,
Only one day left – woo hoo. Are you ready? I think I’m just about all prepared so now I can have a play here. In Australia it is summer now but most of us still celebrate with a hot Roast lunch and hot Christmas pudding. Crazy I know, the kitchen can be an incredibly steamy place with high temperatures, but I wouldn’t want it to be any other way. Those who don’t have the traditional lunch go all out with beautiful Aussie sea food. I love a summer Christmas and here is someone else I think would enjoy it 🙂 –
Oh that is the best, I love it, such a wonderful song full of happiness. Poor Olaf, if only he knew. This is a better idea for an Aussie “snowman”.
Hope everyone enjoys their Christmas Holidays, may they be full of family and friends.
See you soon,
Our youngest grandchild had her 3rd birthday this week. She chose a piggy birthday cake, aka Miss Piggy.
Here is her cake –
She absolutely loved it.
Now this is the card I made for her –
a bit of fun.
Kissy Kissy to our cute little gd.
Bye for now,
We have many, many, many “wascally wabbits” on our property, so it’s quite a common occurrence to see them hopping around just outside our windows. There are hares too but they usually keep their distance but not this dopey young leveret. It just loped down our driveway and didn’t seem too concerned that someone was watching him from the kitchen window.
I really didn’t know much about hares and how different they are to rabbits so I went investigating on the web. This site seemed to have an easy explanation of the differences if you are interested.
When I typed “wascally wabbit” I was reminded of my childhood when these characters were very popular on TV. Who else felt sorry for poor old Elmer, he had no idea did he?
Bye for now,
I’m feeling very guilty about my lack of posts over the last few months. Since my dm passed away I’ve been having trouble with motivation. So today I thought I would show you some art by the youngest of my grandsons who has no lack of imagination. Last week his kinder organized an art exhibition (such a cute idea). You could buy the art which was displayed and there was a raffle with prizes. Of course I was really only interested in gs’s paintings but I looked at all of the budding artist’s work. Here are my gs’s paintings –
The sun of course!
A car – no of course not a truck
The one I chose after careful consideration was an abstract “Nature”. I think I might be able to display this quite well. 🙂 I’ll show you the final product in a future post.
Well done to the Kinder for their originality in their choice of fundraising. Congrats to my young up-and-coming artist. 
Bye for now,
I know I’ve shown you photos of Sydney before but I hope you will enjoy these too. Last weekend we went to Sydney with some of our family. It was youngest grandson’s first time on a plane and first time to Sydney. We all enjoyed ourselves, who wouldn’t with the gorgeous scenery and fabulous weather.
A few trees to show you first off –
Down by Circular Quay – Jacarandas
The next tree was at Taronga Zoo – Is it possibly a “tree waratah”? Can anyone tell me?
A tree of a different type. This is the Swarovski Christmas Tree in the Queen Victoria Building. It spans three floors. This year the tree has over 144, 000 sparkling Swarovski crystal ornaments and 60,000 twinkling lights. Over forty hours and 72 construction technicians commit three days to installing it.
A beautiful window also in the Queen Victoria Building.
Madame Tussauds, Darling Harbour. Does anyone in Australia remember this man (the one on the left I mean – Graham Kennedy). In the background you can just see Harold Bishop from Neighbours.
Cathy Freeman from the Sydney Olympics with Layne Beachley and dgs surfing.
We loved “Wicked” it really was fun.
The weather was great and lots of people were enjoying their weekend at the beach – Bondi Beach.
We did lots of walking and our dgs was terrific he hardly missed a beat.
We saw lots more including Australia vs Sth Africa in the 20/20 Cricket but I think that you get an idea of the lovely weekend we had.
Bye for now,
To go into town from our house we have 2 alternate routes. One is a busy road and the other is a back road. This photo was taken on the back road about a week ago. So cute. Are there 14 or 15 ducklings? They were with their mum crossing the road to visit a dam. Poor mum, what a handful wingful. This is taken through the windscreen of the car and on high zoom, so sorry about the quality.
My dh has seen them since then and was sad to report there were only 6 remaining. 😦 We think by the evidence that a car had hit them. 😥
Even though it is a narrow road cars speed along.
Spring has sprung but the weather is still very changeable so I hope the remaining ducklings survive.
Bye for now,
In Australia it is Father’s Day today. We were having morning tea together but apart from that we had no big plans. As it turns out DH had a great day. 2 of the grandchildren and their dad came out to our home to fly some kites which we had bought in Japan. It was a windy and sunny spring day, just perfect for kites. There is plenty of room around us uninterrupted with power lines or other hazards. Unfortunately I didn’t think to take photos 😦 . The next bit of news I did think to take photos.
The GS asked if they could all go fishing in our dam. Next thing I know GS is calling out that he had caught a “whopper”. GS being only 4, I wasn’t sure how big a “whopper” was, but it really was huge.
A beautiful Rainbow Trout and SIL was very happy with it, but GD doesn’t look too thrilled does she. She thought it was a bit “yucky” I think.
Now usually this story would have a very happy ending with everyone enjoying a delicious meal but not this time. Our dear old dog (who hardly gets off her bed nowadays) found the fish and ran off with it and buried it for later when she was hungry. 😦 . There weren’t any tears but they were close. Luckily I had taken some photos so they still have bragging rights.
Bye for now,
I’m back from 3 days visiting my son and his children. It was a lovely long weekend. The weather was a glorious 24 – 26°C.
We went to the football at the Metricon Stadium and were very impressed with the stadium and fans. For a new club they are doing well.
Here are the Sun’s players doing their stretches before the game. A young team.
Wow this is what you want to see – encouraging fans right from babies (just some of the very keen fans). Does that look like a pie? 😆
Here is my granddaughter with Suns team t-shirt and red and gold hair 🙂
It was fun watching my grandson showing his tricks on his skate board and scooter.
It was so relaxing just sitting on the deck watching all the birds in the trees. Butcher birds, varieties of parrots, magpies, finches, and nasty miners are some of the birds which live in the trees around their home. Bats flying in at dusk were a bit disconcerting at first.
Sorry this photo is not terribly sharp. This parrot was about 30 cm (1′) long and such a vivid colour (King Parrot – perhaps). It was eating the fruit off the trees. Are they figs? (I’ve been told that it is a Loquat tree)
The only sad thing about this visit was that when we got back down south to our home the temperature was 11°C and raining. Brrrr.
Bye for now,
Last Saturday was our regular craft get-together and we all had a lovely relaxing day. This is what we made –
There were 10 of us but I’m afraid I didn’t take photos of everyone. In fact I didn’t take these photos either, one of the other women noticed that I had forgotten to take photos again and snapped a couple for me. I’ll have to catch up with the others next time.
Thank you Pam for showing us your gorgeous project.
Bye for now,
Here in my part of Australia it seldom snows, even though we do have cold weather it is rarely cold enough to snow. We all turn into little kids again when it does snow even if only briefly. 🙂 This photo was taken at our house about 4 days ago. So pretty
The following 3 days we have woken to very heavy frosts but when the frost melts we have had beautiful blue skies. I don’t care if it is cold as long as there are blue skies. It makes me hopeful that winter is on its way out.
The second seldom seen thing is this spectacular cake.
We had a lovely engagement party to attend yesterday and this is the amazing cake. The cake and stunning icing peonies and flowers were made by the VERY TALENTED sister of the engaged couple. How many hours do you think it would have taken her? I couldn’t even hazard a guess.
Look at the beautiful ombre effect in the peonies. Spectacular. Can you tell I was very impressed? 😀 The engaged couple looked just as beautiful, handsome and happy too. It was a lovely day.
Bye for now,
I have started to go through our photos from Japan and thought I should share a few more with you.
The Senso-ji Buddhist Temple in Tokyo is one of the most famed temples in all of Japan.
These lovely girls in traditional clothes were happy for me to take their photos.
We visited “KidZania” in Tokyo. It has more than 90 different activities for Kids to choose from. Here our grandchildren chose to learn about making ice cream. They had to wear hair nets and caps and aprons. They learned about washing their hands and hygiene etc. After performing this they were able to pipe a soft serve ice cream for themselves. What fun! Some of the other careers they could try were beautician, inventor, fireman, policeman, bride & groom, engineer, construction worker, fashion designer etc, etc, etc.
Rickshaws for the tourists.
Ninna-ji Temple’s 5 storied pagoda (above) and below a view through one of the circular windows in the former residence of the head priest. The zen was evident in this place.
We went to the Tokyo National Museum and that was one of my high lights. It made you realize just how old their culture is. This is a photo Shakōki-dogū (1000–400 BCE) (BC – wow!!!), “goggle-eyed type” figurine. A Japanese woman was looking at this figurine when I approached and she was very excited to tell me that the figurine had “goggles” and that it was very mysterious because this was well before glasses were invented and that made it was from the heavens. I think she was trying to tell me he was an alien. Her husband just shook his head and walked off, but she was very excited to tell me (perhaps something was lost in translation) 🙂
Sagano Bamboo Grove – wonderful. It is in a UNESCO World Heritage area. You really can’t tell the scale from this photo. The bamboo was at a guess 10 metres (about 34 feet) high and the diameter was about 180 mms (perhaps 8 inches) at the base.
Japanese seem to love their ice cream and there are lots of shops specializing in just that. We sat in this shop and enjoyed very refreshing ice cream. Unusually most of the ice creams sit on top of corn flakes. Surprisingly it seems to go well together. The staff in this store were dress traditionally and were happy to pose for a photo. Our little grand daughter’s red hair made her very popular and everyone wanted to be her friend. 😆
We had a wonderful time and recommend Japan as a friendly and safe place to visit.
Bye for now,
I’m back from a wonderful, interesting, educational, fun …….. holiday. I’m still organizing myself so I just have a couple of photos for you today, but I will definitely be showing you more soon.
The Golden Pavilion (Kinkakuji) is a Zen Temple in Kyoto – the top floors are covered in gold leaf. Such a beautiful area.
How have they achieved this?
The plastic replicas of food in the shop windows is remarkable and makes it much easier to choose (or not choose in this case).
I’m off to our crafty day now (luckily I don’t have to prepare anything this time).
Bye for now,
Cards & Co
Cards & Co 