A budding engineer?

In recent months I've had more 'grandma duties' on a regular basis. The little Miss goes to daycare 3 days a week, but lately her mum has been attending professional development workshops and the gym on her days off so Anthea and I have had lots of play dates.
From just before she was born last year, I have been checking out the op shops looking for good quality toys. I've got some bargains...really good brands like Fisher Price. The toys have all been washed and left out in the sun to dry.

A friend saw Anthea playing with them one day and commented on all the new toys. When I told him they were all op shop buys, he was amazed.

I've been adding musical toys as I find them as she loves them...and this week she sang the 'ee i ee i o'  with the Old MacDonald had a Farm toy.

But her absolute favourite toys are non toys. Anthea has a fascination with brooms, mops and feather dusters. It's hilarious watching her in action.

Is this letting down the 'sisterhood' I wondered...encouraging role stereotypes based on gender ??? But then I remembered the simple physics lessons that I had taught the early years classes during my career. These items are actually examples of simple machines.

 Anthea's dad is a mechanical engineer so it's obvious she's inherited his skills and interests. Lol! 😆😆😆

The Sixties...

A few posts ago, I mentioned that DH and I were going to a 60s Themed Fundraiser on August 20. Part of the night was a Scavenger Hunt...we had been given a list of items to find and these had to brought in on the night. 

Gradually I found myself becoming more and more obsessed with finding as many items as we could. I contacted DD1 to see what I could borrow from her ( she loves The Sixties), asked my neighbour who has kept a lot of 'stuff', prowled Op Shops clutching our List, asked Facebook friends...and so it went on! 

It became quite a combined effort....a disco ball from our neighbour, a lava lamp from DD1, Peace Medallion from another neighbour and Ken and Barbie dolls from a workmate of DD1.

Then we had a newspaper cutting from the 1960s. This one was about DH's big brother Keith and his then fiancée buying her wedding shoes. She paid with a champagne bottle full of silver coins...a Danish tradition apparently. ( don't think it would work paying for shoes with 5 cent coins these days! Lol) this article was in an old scrapbook of cuttings that I had made in my teens.

The James Bond book was borrowed from the Library and the Phantom comic was borrowed from my brother. 

On the list were various records and we had them because DH kept a lot of his old vinyls! The cassette tape was accepted by the judge even though I know it was later than the 1960s. 

The squash racquet came from the Asthma Op Shop in Mitchelton, the fabrics from my stash ( not really 1960s so I haven't hoarded them that long!) and the macrame plant hanger came from Bargain City. The tie dyed fabric was a surprise find...on a shelf in a spare bedroom...probably from when I did a Sea themed Unit with my Year 2 class. 

Something we didn't have in the 1960s turned out to be so helpful in finding items...yep, the computer.

We also had to find examples of advertisements of the 1960s... Copper tone was one suggestion on the list and boy there was a lot to choose from! I chose this one with Annette...

But they weren't the only items that the computer and Google helped with. One of the items in the Svavenger Hunt was a model of the USS Enterprise...Star Trek. Well I quickly discovered that those people in my 'circle' we're not Trekkies...no, they were Star Wars aficionados! Not to be beaten as I suspected that having the model could be worth a lot of points....I found a cut out of the Enterprise on the Net.

It looked a bit challenging but my neighbour's lovely grandson, offered to put it all together...and I hadn't even dropped any hints either! 😃

It was a very fiddly operation...

Because I'd just printed on paper, not card, Jay devised some structures to help the model stand up...

Nothing in the checklist said we couldn't have a paper model and, as we had the only Starship Enterprise, we got a heap of bonus points. And we also were the only ones to have a Ken doll, so we did rather well and won the Scavenger Hunt! 

And we gave Jay the prize, so the family can enjoy a chocolate fondue dessert! 

And the bowl that the fondue pot, burner, forks, chocolate buttons and marshmallows are in, was made from an old record. One of the night's organisers made a whole lot of these for serving bowls...

It was a great night...lots and lots of laughs! Don't know if it raised much money for the parish, but it sure raised everyone's spirits. 

You will have to wait for a post about what we wore...it's coming soon!!! 

I can laugh about it now...

In the last week of October last year, I found myself displaying 'nesting' behaviours. I was feverishly tidying cupboards in the kitchen...wiping down the shelves after some decluttering and replacing items neatly. In the main bedroom, I sorted through the wardrobe and was ruthless with garments that hadn't been worn for yonks! Some items went in the regular rubbish bin, but these bags went to the charity bins at a local shopping centre. 

The reason for all these frenzied efforts was that I was heading off for that hernia repair op in early November. Somehow I had got it into my head that if the worst happened and I didn't survive the op, that my many sisters in law and various female friends of DH would come to help him and I didn't want them to go, 'Hmmm, she wasn't much good at keeping things tidy eh?' I can assure you that now my attitude is, 'So? What's it matter? And would those women even bother? Lol!! 

And also back then in late October, I was writing lists...yes me and lists...love them! 

Again these lists were what I wanted people to do in case I 'didn't make it'. I was signed up for 3 swaps so DH had email details to contact those organisers if necessary.

Then there were the directions for disposal of my yarn and fabric stashes...

And the directions for the stash of yarn and the blankets made by joining donated squares...

The fabric stash...

Note the special mention of my collection of children's fabrics including my stash of fat quarters of all the fabrics in Jodie Carleton's Backyard Circus...

Instructions for the blog...and a reminder of what remains in an insurance policy after cashing in units...

So...nothing about the whereabouts of items that had belonged to my mother, first mother in law and my 2 grandmothers that I would want to pass on to my girls. No information of any accounts that might need paying...oh just heaps of things that I didn't think of! Lol. Good job I survived isn't it? Lol

And of course, I have more room in my wardrobe and nice clean and tidy kitchen cupboards!!