What a busy month that was!

Yes May 2016 was definitely a busy month! It started with the tidying and sprucing up that goes with having a guest to stay.

And then we did lots of things with our guest. She arrived on a very busy weekend with Mothers Day and a family get together in honour of our son in law's mother who was visiting from NZ to see/meet/ and adore baby Anthea...( like we all do!) 

Mothers Day lunch at DsD2s place...

And we also celebrated with a Mothers Day Dinner at DD2s....

We celebrated a life at a family gathering to scatter a much loved relative's ashes...

Then a day later it was my birthday celebration with a dinner at a favourite local Swiss restaurant.

 And I've already written about those 'cemetery safaris' tracking down family graves.

We took our visitor to museums too...

We got to travel a bit too...

Close to home was Stradbroke Island with its picturesque scenery and wonderful wildlife...

A bit farther away was a trip to Taree in New South Wales...the Manning River district was beautiful. 

We enjoyed a few meals out during our Taree sojourn...

My ankle continued to improve and only had light strapping on and even though closed in shoes still didn't fit, I could wear my Ziera sandals again...( the bruising on the toes in this photo has now faded somewhat) 

We waved goodbye to our visitor on the 23rd...

 

Near the end of the month, the family gathered to celebrate DH's birthday...

Because we had so many family 'dos' in May, we saw more of DD2's dogs Jimmy and Missy, and that's always a bonus!

And right at the very end of the month, I managed to get to a Knit and Natter with K4BN. I have missed a few of these, so it was lovely to catch up with some knitting friends again.

So I wonder what June will have in store??🤔

The 'Big Coat'...

At the moment I have friends who are visiting the USA. Their photos show that they are wearing coats, warm hats and gloves as it is obviously very cold where they are at the moment (NYC and Athens, Ohio)
Their photos reminded me of a blog post of Cathy's that I read  earlier this year, and I had decided that I would like to write a similar post. Cathy wrote about her red coat and showed photos of herself in all sorts of locations, wearing this coat. So over the next few months, I looked through holiday photos for ones of me wearing my 'big coat' as I call it. So seeing my friends all rugged up reminded that I had that folder of photos all ready to use :-)

Cruising out from Auckland...

Above the city of Auckland...

The hood is down in this photo...(somewhere in Nth Island NZ)

Here I'm listening to the guide on the Isle of the Dead tour just off Port Arthur in Tasmania. The hood is down again but I have a beanie on instead...and a scarf so it must have been cold! 

 The next photo of me wearing my 'big coat' was taken in the Hobart Botanical Gardens...

 The garden beds are the ones used in the Gardening Australia Show...


The next photo shows DH and I both in our 'big coats'. We are on our way up to the top of Ben Nevis in Scotland...

 In the next photo, I am with my nephew Gregg whom we met up with when we were in London in 2008. Gregg ran Jack the Ripper tours then and DH and I had organised to join the tour one night...

As night fell, I was glad that I had such a warm coat...

Ha ha! I don't look happy in this photo below...

We had driven out of NYC and stopped at this lookout in New Jersey so that we could look out over the river to NYC...it was freezing!! lol

Talking of freezing...when we visited Niagara Falls, the sides of the falls on the US side were frozen. I had thermals on plus a skivvy, jumper, gloves,scarf and the 'big coat'...I was sorta warm...

The photo below was taken this year in Arrowtown, New Zealand...yeah it was cold there too! lol

The hat I'm wearing was bought in Canada 2 years ago; it doesn't get cold enough in SE Queensland to wear it!

This time, late afternoon in Queenstown, NZ, last May

Also NZ last May, this time at 'The Bluff'...

 The next photo was taken in the UK and I'm sitting on the boat that does cruises on Lake Windermere...a dull cold day but still beautiful!

Oops! That's not my 'big coat'! DH and I stayed in Olympia which is on like a spur line in London. This was taken on our first day there when I was optimistically wearing a light jacket. Locals told us that it had been a very cold winter and although it was supposed to be Spring the weather was still wintery.

Big coat back on now! This photo was taken on the viewing platform of the Stanserhorn in Switzerland. It was quite very cold but beautiful scenery of course.

My big coat hangs in the wardrobe most of the time as home is in the sub-tropical part of my state. But I have worn it on trips to Toowoomba and Stanthorpe!

Darn! I forgot F.N.S.I.

Yep! Reading other people's blogs today, I realised that I forgot all about this. I had checked out Heidi's blog a few weeks ago but then promptly forgot the details. But as it turns out, I was a bit busy on Friday night though. DH's DD2 and her fiance arrived back home late Friday afternoon, after 3 months backpacking throughout South America. DH picked them up from the airport and the young couple came to dinner at our place. A week or so ago, when they had accepted our invitation to dinner, I sent them an email asking if they had any requests of what they would like to eat, after being away from home cooking for so long...and the answer was roast vegetables...that was what they were craving! lol

K clowning around at Chapado lookout in Brazil

In La Paz in Bolivia

Animal called capivara crossing the road (Brazil); it's the world's largest rodent

Chapado lookout in Brazil

The entrance to the Transpantanal ; an amazing road (not open all year round though)

Not sure if this is a piranha or not but I know they did see them in the wild.

So I cooked some beef in the slow cooker and did a large baking dish of roast potatoes, pumpkin and sweet potatoes in the oven. So we sat around the dinner table  eating the baked dinner and hearing more about their adventures. They had first spent a week or so in the US catching up with friends in various states and then went to Mexico City to catch a flight to Peru. From Peru, they headed to Bolivia, then Argentina, then Uruguay and then to Brazil. Finally last week they flew to Santiago in Chile, to catch their flight to Auckland and then another flight to Brisbane. So what an adventure they had; saw wonderful sights and met extraordinary people; each also became quite ill with a virus at one stage, DsD2 also suffered a bout of food poisoning, had a fall, ran low on money, had delayed flights etc...so the good with the bad.

Now they were both very tired, so they went on their way fairly early, so then I sat down with some knitting...This is my Knitted Minestrone project...the coloured sections consists of oddments/ends/scraps of yarn. It's a throw, I'm using 8 ply black yarn but the scraps are a variety of plys. There are a number of us who contribute to the Knit Minestrone Blog and we're having lots of fun with our projects...

White...

White....

Guess who aged 18; white shawl, white gloves, white carnations and white lace curtains!

Once again I'm joining in with Evi over at Sister Sun and today I've chosen some photos with 'White' as the focus. I was never a debutante so did not have the long white evening dress. The year that I graduated from teachers' college ( at 19) was the first year that a long white dress was not mandatory; we were free to wear colours. So I did; I wore a peach coloured crepe dress with gold braid trims! 

At my first wedding I wore white, I have often owned and worn white shoes; when I was younger I wore white gloves with ballgowns. I remember Maggie Tabberer (an Australian model from the 50s and 60s) saying that all women should have a white shirt/blouse in their wardrobes and when I wore more formal work clothes, I did indeed have a number of white shirts. 

In Australia it's often said that if you are going to eat beetroot...don't wear white as you will invariably spill the beetroot on those white garments. Tennis players and lawn bowls players once only wore white...but not any more! Anyway...here are my photos for this week...

 The photo above is of my nephew Edward who is wrapped up in a baby blanket that I had made for him. I used lots of colours but 'framed' them with white
The photo below is the first quilt that I ever made. It was made of rosettes/suffolk puffs and colours are sewn into blocks and then edged by a row of white rosettes.

This is on the deck of the Queen Mary which is now a hotel in Long Beach CA

One of our cousin's golden retrievers

Holding my great niece Lucy who is wearing a little 'peasant style' blouse that I gave her and I'm wearing one of my favourite blouses.

Snow field near Saltlake City

Coming from sub tropical Brisbane, I found Saltlake City a bit cold...

A model of the Mormon temple in Temple Square information centre

A model of an astronaut in Evergreen Aeronautical and  Space Museum just outside Portland

A model of the moon buggy

Workers cottages in Cannery Row

The lovely crisp white sheets on the bed in our hotel in Monterey

What was originally the dining room in Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay

An unknown jogger on the path beside a lake in central Park, NY

The magnificent Guggenheim Gallery, NY

I rode this ferris wheel at Niagara while DH preferred to stay on the ground and take photos!

Ice and white spray in a section of Niagara Falls

The closest we could get to the White House was the 'back gate'; note the 2  black shapes on the roof?  Men with big guns!!!

Still on the subject of the White House...this is the gown that Michelle Obama wore to the Inaugural Ball (on display with other first lady gowns in the Smithsonian)  

The statue of Abe in the Lincoln Memorial

I was so entranced by the beauty of the Basilica and bell tower (leaning tower) in Pisa. It is built of the most exquisite white marble...photos just don't do it justice

The photo above shows my DDs playing 'dress ups'. DD1 is wearing my wedding dress and veil (but not the original headdress) and DD2 is dressed as the groom!! (Those 2 always loved to dress up when they were girls!) Now below is yours truly wearing the same dress...

This is DD1 and I

Here is DD2 and husband
Sadly both those marriages ended in divorce so these photos rarely see the light of day any more.