potato harvest

i thought i should empty my potato sacks - it being christmas and all. sweet little pontiacs, and lots of rich soil to use.
we ate some potatoes for dinner - lightly boiled with rosemary and butter. yummy.

another nativity and a happy christmas

i took a photo on christmas night at my parents of the nativity i made for my mum a few years ago. it is black silhouette figures set in a cardboard box that i silver-leafed. inside a candle illuminates the figures behind a painted translucent panel. i always forget it until i see it on my parent's sideboard at christmas time.
we had loads of food and lovely music after dinner and the children played we did it all again the following day.
we gave izzy beautiful art materials (a huge boxed set of excellent coloured pencils) etc.
mookhi got some cool summer clothes and a pass for classes as the local yoga centre.
sophie received an afghani carpet, and rosie an effects rack for her guitar.
i gave pete a 'keyline design' workshop in january and he is giving me a series of piano lessons from a renowned sydney blues pianist! all good and creative presents i reckon.
happy christmas to everyone!

gingerbread nativity scene

i like to try and make a new nativity scene each year for my mama. this year it is edible - gingerbread with vanilla icing.
pete ate one of the shepherds as there was no room for him in the inn.

paper snowflakes

i love making these hexagonal snowflakes, even though snow is the furthest thing from our summer christmas. floating in the pool is more like it.
fold paper in half and then in thirds - do it by eye and you'll soon become accurate at this part. cut and be creative.

old nativity

i must make a new one. this is from a few years back, but i did make a christmas wreath from an old tambourine and some glass beads...

bobo creek... wish we were there

just to remind me what it looks like. and get ready for the further greening, increasing of bio-mass, fertility, hydrolgy, bio-diversity, and the control of salinity, erosion, degradation etc...

from global warming in the morning to a very chilled party

pete and i went in to the city to take part in the walk against warming from martin place to the botanical gardens. it was a glorious early summer day. dunno how many turned out, but certainly fewer than melbourne's 40,000.

that evening we attended a party with a massive prism of ice set up for slurping shots for the adults and fruitjuice for the kids. cool. and exquisitely beautiful. i could have been very unsociable and sat and stared at the ice crystals all evening...

a bit tidier..

pete and i spent an intense sunday morning de-cluttering. we sent boxes and boxes off to the local vinnies and have a council rubbish pick-up booked for tomorrow. now we can see the surfaces. it does look better. the acoustics are different too!
we've had weekly cleaners for some time now, and they are very polite and korean and must be horrified at the mess each week. i apologised once and she assured me it wasn't too bad. i joked and said her house couldn't be as bad as ours and she replied discreetly that it was "similar". actually they don't do a very good job - they wipe around stuff etc, but i'm too soft to sack them...

incidentally look at the car they drive compared with ours...
our car:
the cleaners' car:

step one in the cull and tidy pogrom

i've sorted out all the stationery and art supplies in the shelves that the kids and i use (not my private art supplies in my bedroom), and now even have a box for little squares of origami paper. trouble is you can't see the difference; it's just tidy on the inside. need a bold statement.

how to de-clutter and cull....

i hate the sound of both those words! actually 'clutter' doesn't sound too good either, except in a bohemian-artsy kind of way. but sooner or later we are going to have to shed some junk and shift up north. it's possible we'll have another move in sydney in the meantime - all in the hands of the landlady at this stage....
we have (meaning me and the girls as pete travels light - or rather all his stuff is skillfully stored in the studio: he has music cables hidden behind sound-proofing panels etc.) so much stuff: books, art and craft supplies, musical instruments, soap and jam making equipment as well as lots of products, camping gear, cooking and eating stuff, clothes (you should see sophie's vintage collection!) stuff like paintings, statues, ornaments, and of course gazillions of plants and gardening stuff...
so i'm looking at options - ebay, a garage sale, council pick-ups etc. but above all a way of keeping stuff and storing it well - ideally so i can get at it all easily. i love having my sewing machine set up and my water colours where i can lay my hands on them and bookshelves overflowing...so i'm looking for a compromise. stay tuned.
in the meantime i'll sign up to chorebuster...

my vocals on a short film

quite a few years ago i provided vocals (and some creative input as well) for a delightful short film made by paul mcdermott. paul wrote a couple of delightful but slightly warped fairy tales with his amazingly intricate illustrations. they have been well crafted into short films. this first one is called "the scree". adrian vandervelde wrote the sound track and david berkelouw and i provided the vocals and lyrics etc. ruth cracknell did a superb narration, shortly before she died.
all in all it was fun, and a few years later we did a second, "the girl who swallowed bees". i've just found the scree on youtube. it's in two parts...

weekend at bobo creek

izzy, pete, jessie and i spent two full days at bobo creek which was heavenly - despite being pretty warm. but the creek was cool and the tea on the deck under the trees refreshing and the slow-cooked chicken curry yummy and the company of my sister rebecca and her son sivy delightful. we made jessie have a few swims to keep her cool. and we all spent a lot of time floating around under the dappled green canopy.