An award... me?

This is how it all started... Lea over at http://livinglifenowinkiwiland.blogspot.com/, got a Liebster Award from another blogger. The idea is that if you get an award, you too must select 5 blogs from your reading list and hand on the Liebster award. The blogs that you choose have to have less than 200 followers. It's a tough one... You see I now have that task of selecting just 5 blogs, as Lea very kindly selected my blog as one of her five. She wrote, 'I love her trips down memory lane. I love her photos.'

I love all the blogs that I follow plus a number that I just read occasionally. One blog I was going to select for an award was Maria at Life on the Block...but she has 209 followers.  Polly's Porch had hundreds of followers too. So after much deliberation here are my Liebster Awards

1. Becky for her lovely photography of her area of the world and  her gorgeous pets. Becky also does the most amazing sewing and jewellery to mention just a few of her crafting skills. I've googled lots of places that she has mentioned in her blogs...so I'm learning about SC even though I'm half a world away.
2. Tanya has a blog that was one of the first that I became a follower. Tanya is someone who is sharing her knowledge of living in a more simpler way with her community. Her recipes are legendary! She wrote to me privately last year giving such comforting and wonderful advice when my DD2 was causing me a bit of worry . I really appreciated that.
3. Linn is another amazing woman. Her blog is all about family life and Linn's family includes foster children. Linn cooks her own bread and makes cheese and pasta to mention just a few items. Her and Mr Linn's vegie garden is thriving.
4. Jan has 2 blogs. The link goes to Sew Many Quilts-Too little time and the other blog is Oz Comfort Quilts. Jan has been able to donate almost 600 quilts to various appeals during 2011. People donate QAYG quilt blocks to Jan and she turns them into full-size quilts, so that's a lot of bindings to do. She also accepts unfinished/unwanted quilt tops and then finishes them. As well, Jan knits and crochets for charities,including beanies, rugs, scarves etc.
5. TGL 's work takes her travelling a bit so I enjoy her photos and posts of other countries and places. Her nature photos are very impressive. TGL takes a lot of care with the text in her posts whereas I often just dash something off. She is also Jewish and I'm enjoying learning about the customs and traditions that TGL and her husband follow.
6. Now I'm putting in a 6th blog as I believe that Jan's travelling in China may make it difficult for her to choose 5 of her favourite blogs and write a post on it. So maybe there is a tie! lol Claudia's blog (and her former one) has been a favourite of mine for ages. I learn so much about life in the US from Claudia and I've even learned about Claudia's homeland El Salvador. Claudia writes in a delightfully witty way and her pictures are always great...especially ones of her darling cat CC and her garden.
And now that's my five/six. I follow loads of other great blogs and I would recommend them all!
Now those people that I've chosen, link back to me and nominate five others with under 200 followers.

The Sunday drive on New Year's Day continued...

In the previous post I outlined the drive that DH and I took just around parts of our city. After we visited the cemetery where DH's grandparents lie, we headed towards, but not into, the city centre. We drove through the suburbs of South Brisbane and West End, travelling past old churches in Cordelia St, with a view of Stefan's (an iconic Hairdresser here?) SkyNeedle as well. The Skyneedle was a tower structure which was built for the World expo in 1988. It used to have a spotlight/searchlight  show each evening of Expo where lights would sweep over Brisbane suburbs from the tower. Stefan bought the tower and erected it outside his headquarters' building in South Brisbane. It's been 'in the wars' though. Before the base was flooded last year, there had been a fire in it that caused extensive damage.

A Greek church

Another old church on the corner of Cordelia St, Sth Brisbane

Yet another old church building on Cordelia St (not used as a church any more)

Sky Needle

Peel St looking towards Grey St and the CBD in the distance

'Office' accomodation on Peel St

GoMA building on the right

The lovely old Grey St Bridge aka William Jolly Bridge

The Police Barracks development on Petrie Terrace

The not so salubrious side of Petrie Terrace

On the ICB (Inner city Bypass)

Driving along towards the Hamilton Reach of the river

Racecourse rd Hamilton

Crossing the river again, we drove past the Gallery Of Modern Art, and the suburb of petrie Terrace where an historical old building, The old Police Barracks has been turned into a modern retail, dining and movie theatre complex.
Using the Inner City Bypass Rd, we emerged from the short tunnel near Breakfast Creek and drove down Kingsford Smith drive. This road runs along beside the Brisbane River and on this public holiday it wasn't packed bumper to bumper with traffic :-). We ended up at the Coffee Club on Racecourse Rd Ascot which was a very busy place on this public holiday. After a coffee we headed back home after a drive that had taken  us through quite a few suburbs!

The roadworks at the end of Stafford rd which includes a tunnel as well as these freeway ramps.

A Sunday drive...

Yesterday DH and I went for a drive in the afternoon...no particular destination in mind but we thought that we'd check out a recent road upgrade of Gap Creek Road. This road that been a link between two leafy suburbs The Gap and Kenmore for many years, but it was little more than a dirt track. The new upgrade saw it being completely sealed. On our way to Settlement Rd, we detoured to have a look at the area around DH's old high school. This area was farming country when DH went to school and for a number of years after...but not now

DH's high school is way in the distance. When DH went to school all the foreground was farms

Where the farms were are now housing

Back on the main road now and a view of buildings which were the original buildings

Then we drove up Settlement Rd, Keperra on our way to The Gap. We ten crossed over Waterworks Rd and got on to Gap Creek Rd.

Settlement Rd

The entrance to one of the old quarries

Gap Creek Rd

This part of the road used to be unsealed

At the end of Gold Creek Rd we drove through the suburb of Kenmore, then took a ramp to go on to the Western Freeway which took us over the Brisbane River. DH had planned that we would stop for a coffee at the DFO, Coffee Club (Direct Factory Outlet) at Jindalee, but it was closed. DH knows lots of shortcuts and back ways before I knew it we were driving through the suburbs of Rocklea, Fairfield, Yeronga ( all of which were flooded last January) and it seemed like all of a sudden we were at the old inner suburb of Dutton Park! We visited the Dutton Park Cemetery to stop at DH's grandparents' grave. They were very poor, despite his grandfather being a war hero (Boer and WW1) the grave is unmarked :-(

Old Boggo Rd Jail which is a re-development site

Just some rough ground, no headstone or marker

A lovely old brick hotel

Views of the city in the distance as we head towards South Brisbane

There's still some more of our drive to go...but I'll write about that tomorrow :-)                                                                             



Christmas gifts...

When I was a little girl my mother would make me write thank you notes/letters to the people who had given me gifts. For some reason I thought about that letter writing the other day even though it is many many years ago. Those letters were dreadful!
I would start with the greeting (eg Dear Nanna) and write a sentence saying thank you after writing the obligatory 'How are you? I am fine.' Then obviously to fill up the page I would then proceed to write another sentence listing ALL the gifts I got on that particular occasion! I like to think that I used commas but probably I just used lots of the word 'and'. Pretty crass and self-centred!

Now I'm not going to write a post listing all this year's Xmas gifts and normally I wouldn't really mention gifts but this year my gifts have been very special. Regular readers would be used to my occasional rants about my having too much 'stuff'. My gifts from the family this year are extremely thoughtful; many are consumables to be enjoyed and these items don't need a home to be found for them :-) Here's some of the items that my lovely family gave me...

I love the story of Noah and this lovely item came from my brother and his partner

This year I have received some handmade gifts such as a beautiful fruit cake from my brother's partner and a mosaic tile as a feature in the garden which was made for me by DH's DD1. Meg put a hydrangea motif in the design as she knows it is a favourite flower so how special is that?

I plan to put the tile near the new front entrance and grow some blue/mauve annuals around it :-)

From my BIL and SIL I received a cultivator which my BIL bought online at a bargain price. (on Christmas Day at their place, I tried out their one and it worked a treat!) DH's DD2 and her partner gave me some skeins of soft New Zealand merino wool which they bought whilst in NZ...so thoughtful and useful! My DD1 bought me a coffee mug in a pretty tin that I can take to Sisters of Stitch and use the lid of the tin for my afternoon tea plate.

DD1 also bought me some cuttings/divisions of 3 types of irises. My DD2 bought me a lovely metal rooster who's taken up residence on the new veranda and DH's DD3 gave me a Bunnings (huge hardware chain)voucher that will help buy another raised garden bed for vegetables. Then there are the chocolates...more than enough to see us through until Easter!

It's New Year's Eve here in Australia and this evening people will see in the New Year in various ways...Happy New Year to everyone and may 2012 be a great year!

PS This post probably did end up like the letters to my Nanna and godmother,but hopefully the punctuation and grammar have improved!!! lol The technology has certainly advanced.

Some more of my family story...

As well as writing my life story in installments this year, I've also written about my parents and some of their stories. I mentioned in one post that my mother had a daughter from her wartime marriage to a fellow soldier she had met. The story is very sad as this 'gentleman' left my mother before the baby was born. My grandparents helped my mother out by providing a home for her until the baby was born. After the baby's birth, my mother looked for jobs as a cook where she could have her daughter with her and live in.

One place she worked at as a sous cook/chef was the Warren Guesthouse in Mildura. The owners were very kind to her. Somewhere along the line my mother became the penpal of the man who would be my father. I guess they wrote pretty interesting letters to each other because after a while my father asked her to come to Brisbane where he lived. He actually went to Victoria to bring her back to Queensland. My sister was left with her grandmother and the plan was that when my mother was settled, my father said he would organise for Margaret to come to Brisbane also. That never happened and my sister was put into an orphanage when she was about 5. (I still cringe when I think of that even though I had nothing to do with decision making etc and was just a tiny baby :-(...what's that about 'the sins of the father'?)

When my sister was 11, my mother's sister Mary took my sister out of the orphanage and raised her with her own big family of 5 children. When my sister was 19 (and I was 14) she came to Brisbane for a reunion with my mother which I wrote about in this post. I've had an 'on again off again' relationship with my sister over the years...sometimes she was friendly, sometimes not so friendly...I guess I got some of the blame for the 'sins of the mother' :-( She (my sister)  was treated abominably ( maybe a bit judgmental there Maria!) but I'm sure my mother did what she did because she thought it was the right thing to do at the time).

In 2002 DH and I drove south and we went to see my sister (I had previously visited her a couple of times including travelling in a 9 seater plane when she lived in Forbes). It was not a good visit although things did improve by the evening of the day we spent there but I thought that I'd got the message...'you're not welcome' and there was a degree of acceptance with that. DH urged me to send birthday cards over the years which were never acknowledged, then out of the blue we got an email when the city was flooding in January asking if we were ok. I replied and got no response. Then in December I got an Xmas ecard from her.

God works in mysterious ways...I had an old diary of my mum's from 1945 to 1947. In it mum has chronicled the meeting with Margaret's father, finding out she was pregnant, getting married and a much later entry is when she starts writing to my father...That diary had seemed to go missing and one day i found it just in the drawer of my bedside cabinet.  I don't know what made me do this but  I photocopied a few pages and sent them via email, asking if she would like the diary...she answered and was very excited and said her children would love it too.

My sister as a baby

Then I was rummaging in the cupboard in the laundry when I found some lovely old photos of my mother, my sister as a baby and mum's old work uniform when she was in the army (AWAS). So all of those items are being bundled up ready to be posted to my sister and her children.

Mum's old Army work uniform



Close up of one of the buttons...only 4 have been found



Label inside uniform

A bit of visiting...

DH and I didn't do much on Boxing Day but on Tuesday we drove the 100km to the part of the Sunshine Coast where my niece and her husband Eric live. Jenny had had a full house over Christmas with 10 people staying for a family get together. DD2 and partner had also gone up on Christmas Day but had come home on Monday afternoon.

Lots of traffic heading north

My nephew and his wife had driven up from Sydney to stay with his sister and her husband and as we rarely see Gregg and Chrissie it was important to us that we visit before they left. My brother and his younger 2 sons also came up from Brisbane on Christmas Day. The person who travelled the fartherest was Eric's teenage sister who had flown out from Germany.

Lucy kindly made me a cup of tea!

After days and nights of celebrating we noticed that everyone in the house was flagging a bit, but little Lucy, our great niece was full of energy! lol

Just hanging around...

Watching the cricket test on TV

It's amazing to me that I have all this family as I only found out about them  in December 1999.

Christmas Menus

Many people throughout the world celebrate Christmas. It is certainly a degree of diversity in how people celebrate Christmas and this is especially so with the foods that are traditionally eaten. Claudia, one of my blogging friends who lives in North Carolina wrote a post about preparing food for Christmas. Claudia is originally from El Salvador and I found it so interesting to read here about the foods that her family prepares at Christmas.

When I was growing up, Christmas dinner was always Italian style. We would have pasta first, then a chicken stew which I think was called Chicken (Pollo) Stufato. It was delicious and quite rich with lots of butter and olive oil in the rich tomato based sauce. Chicken was a treat here in Australia in the 1950s and 60s; it was quite expensive. (Even though DH's family had 'chooks' in the backyard, his family still didn't eat a lot of chicken either.) Mum would always make a plum pudding and serve it with homemade custard for dessert ...mmm still love that!

Christmas Eve at our place 2011

Not one, but two plum puddings!

The cake all decorated by DH's cousin

Brandy truffles; a family favourite

Some rocky road made by my brother's partner; the white chocolate one is VERY popular!

It was probably when I was still at primary school that I discovered that my friends  (from British backgrounds) also had chicken for Christmas dinner but they had it roasted and served with gravy and baked vegetables. I then would complain to my mother that I wanted roast chicken not stufato...too bad, so sad, we continued to eat chicken stufato.

When I married and left home I cooked Christmas dinner for the family for 28 years. I used to roast chickens or some cut of meat such as a rib fillet, and a big pan of roast vegetables and of course serve plum pudding and brandy custard. For a few years after that I would go to my brother's house and we would have a BBQ meat and seafood lunch with lots of salads.

When I met DH, suddenly I was part of a big family! I did continue doing a hot roast meal for about 6 years but in the last few years have succumbed to what many Aussies do, have a buffet meal with cold meats and salads...oh and of course, I must not forget the the plum pudding and custard (and icecream and jelly if I'm really being 'naughty')
Maybe readers might like to comment on their Christmas menus?