A quiet week-end

Sometimes a quiet week-end at home is like a spiritual 'alka seltzer'- to find your happy place,
read a new book with a cup of tea, (loving my table)
have hordes of merry children over with their lovely Mums for more tea,
explore new hobbies and try new foods,
be best friends (for a while) and do cheesy Saturday night stuff,
build and tinker,
participate in a spectator sport,
get mad and crazy eyed (an hour before your first gig as an altar server.....puh-lease!!),

and find old friends (not always under the laundry sink). She is back from sewing machine hospital (a very happy place for me) and it cost the princely sum of $32 to fix her!!!
Somebody reminded me to find this pincushion I made last year which reminded me to look in these old drawing books again to see when it was.
Then I found this one which reminded me she was not yet one year old at the beginning of last year
and this one which reminded me how hairless she was- like a little budgie!
That reminded me how she has grown and that this was sanded, painted and sent to its new family for their first baby's arrival on Friday. Passing things on to a new happy place always makes it easier to let it go.
I loved these little shoes. They were just oppy ones but we both thought they were pretty. Buying boy gear at Kmart on Friday, I noticed a woman with a younger toddler looking at almost identical shoes for sale. On an impulse I asked if she would like ours. I had just noticed they were too tight for Shorty's feet. Her child was pleased and smiling, the mum seemed happy enough with a big grin and even Shorty seemed pleased about the giving the 'present'.
It felt good to pass them on to somebody randomly like that. Really good. Would you have minded? Was it presumptuous of me? It made K-Mart a happier place for me anyway- a good start to the week-end.
In case that sounded too nice, Lairy Godmother and I checked out a hugely expensive mansione yesterday with SEVEN bedrooms. Oh the joy of all that sterile resort style space. Then I went out with some girlfriends to a tame local family tavern and witnessed a bar brawl with a couple of rowdy pool playing mobs. Seriously, it's been years! I felt like patting them all on the backs afterwards and saying something demeaning like, "Thank you, boys, for giving all the mummies on our table a most exciting highlight to our evening."

(I think one was called Grub, Julie! x)

Changes afoot

Just for a change we had a homemade pizza picnic in front of Toy Story.Lala felt like a change too so she cooked in her roller derby ensemble. Bananas have started to reappear in the fruit bowl so their prices must have changed as well.
There have been other changes afoot. Long ago this rock was the photo rock at a local park where we had to pick the little tackers up and squat about six of them on there with room to spare. They used to gaze up at the summit of the rock trying to judge whether to climb the North or West face. Now they just step onto it.
This has gone under the house to be passed onto a new baby coming to new parents this month.

It had just become a jumble sale under there and Divine Ms M was getting too long for the top. So it has gone and the nappies will too with Summer. The coat is a bit dreary but was found in a bag by my sister and identified as being mine when I was two. We put Shorty in it and she looked like a Bosnian orphan. How styles change.
Her room has changed now into a little child's room instead of a baby's room. Her interests have changed too. She has stopped lining people up and changed to crowding them in rooms and vehicles- much like her parents do with her siblings.

See that little house down in the left corner. Just for a change I bought that at Ron and Brian's for seriously small change.

I bought it because it was so cunning the way it changes from this neatly packed little apartment...
into this fabulously Miami style villa, complete with roof spa, bunk beds and a waterfall swimming pool.
Look at the casually flung hat and towel. This could be the model for the 'Birdcage' set. One almost expects to see Nathan Lane burst through the port holed door looking for Robyn Williams at any moment!
In stark contrast and to change the flavour of the post completely here is another imminent change. It was busy over the holidays and this was erected when I wasn't looking. I have no idea. That's the letter box in the corner and the untouchable poinsiana which has been there since the 30's and will not be affected for ANY change... but I'll let him go ahead. Bless.
He is helping change this into a much bigger garden but I'm ready to change from veges and just do herbs and flowers and tomatoes. The fauna is overtaking the flora and that is never going to change.
Here's something he prepared earlier. It is a nice change from the lap pool/ quagmire we had after the Brisbane floods in January. That house colour is going to change too he tells me. Any ideas?
It is quite the nice place to hide after I put out the laundry on a sunny morning.
No change here. They are laying like champions and finding a clutch of these never fails to make me feel happy because they are just so pretty and perfect...
so lovely to hold all warm and smooth. I go all pastorale.
Sheizen! Fumble Fingers! Some things never change.
Just for a change here's a different take on Bowie so Frenchy, so chic and acoustic.