A Birthday Present...

I mentioned in a previous post that there were 4 family birthdays for us in May. Two of those were mine and DH's.
For my birthday, I celebrated all day, with a morning tea treat of a florentine and coffee at Marche du Macaron, lunch at a lovely cafe, then a pizza dinner ( takeaway) at home with the family. It was a cold night so we all squeezed into the dining room for dinner rather than the more spacious verandah.
DH's birthday celebrations was again a family dinner, but this time the meal was cooked by me and the birthday cake was made by DsD2!

But this post is really about the joint gift that the family gave us...

They all contributed to the fee for the photographer to take a series of photos over the course of 1 1/2 hours. It was the same photographer who took the photos at DsD1's wedding last July; a lovely young lady named Rebecca.
So last Saturday we all met up at Shorncliffe, a beach suburb in north Brisbane. The first photos were of the whole family. Rebecca posed us against the railing above the beach with a magnificent morning sky behind us. Then she broke us into groups...all the girls, all the young parents with the babies, the 'blokes', some individual photos, DH and I, then DH and I and the 4 grandchildren.
I took a few photos while Rebecca was setting up some shots with the girls and the babies...

Then Rebecca moved us all to the nearby jetty, for lots more photos; again in different groupings as well as ones with the whole family all at once.
Our sons in law...

The 'boys' with their babies...

Us girls got a bit of time to relax from all that smiling! Lol 😉😆

The DsD2 suggested to Rebecca that it would be nice to get some photos of the 4 babies...I knew it wouldn't be easy! The term 'herding cats' came to mind! 😕😬. The young Mothers had to work hard, I can tell you! Lol

Hopefully Rebecca got some better shots than us.

It was so lovely getting together as a family for this session; DsD1, Dan and Baby A drove the long trip from Wandoan especially for the photo. The deal with the photos is that the fee paid by our family entitles us to the photos in digital form to do with them whatever we wish. So in a week or so, they should be available online on Rebecca's website via a password.

Wool on Sunday...

The baby blanket I was making for Abigail got put on the 'back burner' while I made the birthday bunting for Holly. But by the third week in May, I was back working on that knitting project. And except for one stripe, there was no more 'reverse knitting'; obviously I had finally got the hang of the pattern! Lol.
And it's now finished! All ready to hand over this weekend...

I used Paton's Cotton Blend and because I've made a total of 4 baby blankets in this yarn, I had a lot of part balls of this yarn left as well as a number of full balls, including the white. So there are 18 colours in this blankie...I was surprised how many colours I had! ( the pattern is the Bounce Blanket from Tin Can Knits)
I have started a new knitting project which I will donate to our Parish Art and Craft Show in July...

It's very 'early days' obviously...just an inch (2.5cm) of knitting on circular needles with 194 stitches.
And in other yarn related activities, I can see that I will be busy joining a lovely lot of donated squares into blankets ready to be distributed to the needy. It's been suggested that it will be a cold winter this year here in SE Queensland so my plans are to work on these for part of each evening.

Linking up with the Rainbow Hare blog for Wool on Sunday. This month Janine did a teeny tiny knitting project. 😉

Someone Turned 1 in May!

Yes, DD2's daughter had her first birthday in May; that year had certainly flown! After DH and I came back from our holiday, I had 2 weeks to make the birthday bunting that I promised DD2 I would make for Holly. I finished it with 4 days to spare!

I was determined that the bunting would be made from fabric I already had. So a remnant of cotton garbadine, 2 hand dyed pink fat quarters and a remnant of 'cupcake fabric' became Holly's birthday banner. And of course...some buttons. This time I used 'cake' buttons and on the first letters of the 3 words on the banner, I sewed a 'fairy' button to the letter. ( DD2 loved 'anything fairies' when she was a little girl 😉)


It was quite a party...but I've noticed that children's parties are tending to be quite 'big affairs' these days...
There was a jumping castle...it was actually a very clever idea of DD2 to hire the castle as it was a great hit with the large number of children who attended the party.

The birthday girl was a bit young to 'navigate' the jumping castle on her own so daddy helped out...

There was also bubble blowing to do. Uncle Ads gave Anthea a hand there too...

A birthday candle to blow out...

It was a rainbow cake!


We all had a lovely afternoon...
And finishing with a photo of the birthday girl resplendent in her rainbow skirt...

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Things aren't too great in Blogland lately. Most of you would have read about the problems with comments not being emailed to the blogger's Inbox and many of us are flummoxed by new Privacy Laws in the European Community. (Honestly, I don't know if my blog has Cookies)  
And here in my little corner of Blogland, I'm once again having problems with Blogger. The version I use is one I paid for too, but since the last update ( and doesn't an iPad nag you if you don't do the updates???) Blogger is very contrary about uploading photos. So...once again I am emailing photos from my iPad so I can save the photos on the PC and then insert the photos in the web version of Blogger...takes the joy out of blogging with all that hoo ha!

May 2018; 4 birthdays and a wedding!!!

The birthdays were small family affairs but the wedding was a BIG one! We may not have had an invitation to this wedding, and we may have been thousands of kilometres away from the actual venue...but that didn't stop us celebrating the young couple's nuptials. You have probably guessed that I'm referring to THAT wedding held in Windsor.
DH and I dressed up...don't you love that Tshirt! lol

We had bubbly and nibblies...

Eduardo the cat decided to take up residence on the coffee table...we moved him though! lol!

We watched as the guests started to arrive...all those celebrities! I loved looking at all the outfits...and those hats! The milliners would have been very busy! And of course, I'm always impatient to see the bride's outfit. It was a lovely dress...some people criticized the dress for being very plain with no beading etc, but I thought that its simplicity was part of its charm. The veil was magnificent especially the fact that the design woven included the floral emblem of each Commonwealth country...a very nice touch.
And DH and I even had some wedding cake! It was a 'chunk' of DD1's wedding cake from last September which I had had in the freezer. It defrosted perfectly...it was a checkerboard mudcake...delicious!

I went back through old blog posts to find the photos from when DH and I celebrated William and Kate's wedding...it was fun too!

I noticed that this time around more of my friends did exactly what DH and I had done, any excuse to party!! lol  I had thought of inviting friends around to make an evening of it but we decided in the end to just have a quiet night in.

Thank you to those of you who have emailed asking after little Abigail. The family has gone back home to the farm now and the little one is gaining weight due to the nasogastric feeding tube. Last Friday she was fitted with her hearing aids and her mum reports that Abi is responding to sounds.