Girls' Ski Trip to Thredbo '08

The weather was magnificent and there was just enough snow.

The company was just the right amount of crazy

The food was better than any on offer at the local restaurants.

But if offered a sample of the 'Rainbow Python' Schnapps, we recommend you just smile and back away slowly lest you be convinced to swallow this cough-mixture-like concoction.

Only three weeks until my next trip, this time en famille. I'm a lucky little B.

Sydney 3pm

It's hard to believe it's Winter here.

It's hard to imagine that there is snow on the Snowy Mountains, only five hours drive away. I'll be there this time next week. Yay.

Do you WASGIJ?

I'd like to tell you that my kids are so busy playing outdoors or partaking in wholesome educational craft activities that they wouldn't even dream of sitting in front of the idiot box or playing with playstation/wii/nintendo [or insert maddening mind-numbing electronic activity of choice here] this holidays.

But I can't.

Blossom has been confined to the 'even temperatures' of the indoors while she recovers from a throat infection. This means we are all indoors. Bleh.

The traditional holiday jigsaws are a bit of a distraction.

This one is evil because it has a colour photograph in the bottom half and a sepia photo of the same scene taken 100 years ago in the top half. The sepia section will be darned near impossible. Heh heh.

This is one of those WASGIJs. A jigsaw where the picture is just a clue and not what you are actually piecing together. Double heh heh.

Problem is, Firegazer and I are glued to them and the kids hardly get a look in.

BTW, Lesley has given me this award:

Thanks Lesley! Now I need to spread the love and give it to some other bloggers. Now you know I loves youse all but I thought I'd spread the love to those who don't even know I read them...

Here are my top three LURKS who all deserve this award:

The Sartorialist. This guy's blog is so uber cool he won't even care that I read it. Stunning photos of real people wearing real clothes in exotic (to me) locations around the world. Check it out and read why he posts these photos.

Sew Tessuti. Collette Guanta showcases fabulous fabrics from her stores, features her clients and the lovely clothes they sew. Links to places in Sydney you didn't know existed.

Pleasant View Schoolhouse. Anna is quite possibly my polar opposite but a small part of me loves her self-assured approach to making a special home for her family. And the photographs are fabulous.


Now I've just got to reveal myself and tell them I've given them this award...

Crazy Holiday Idea #54: Visit a button shop with five kids

I just had to show Domestic Goddess this fabulous button shop while she was in Sydney. I've blogged about it before; it's the one at the dodgy end of King St, Newtown. Actually, this time 'round it didn't seem so dodgy. Luckily our host was as bohemian as before with her multiple piercings and tatts. The kids were fascinated.

Here is the interior of All Buttons Great and Small with its fabulous 1930s cabinetry. Imagine three boys lying on the floor just out of sight of my camera; one boy moaning and indicating that he may vomit at any moment. Imagine two tween girls oohing and aahing at all the blingy buttons in the glass cabinet some of which cost $50 each. Imagine Domestic Goddess going mad picking out all manner of buttons she hasn't made outfits for yet.

I almost escaped this shop without spending anything until Blossom saw these:

and this:

and Padawan Learner just had to have these:

I couldn't resist them either.

At least I wasn't buying lollies.

Free Fun in Sydney (even for north shore dwellers...)

The school holidays are notorious for putting a hole in the budget; but this week when Domestic Goddess and her three kids visited from Melbourne we had a great time without the need for a second mortgage.

We played in the tunnels at Middle Head.

We walked across Our Bridge.

We hung out for ages at the new Apple Store playing with all the gadgets we'd love to own. That place is a theme park in its own right.

And we played in the harbour at low tide.

Who needs a theme park when we live in one?

Port Douglas Part III: Where the rainforest meets the sea

Not far from Port Douglas is the World Heritage Listed Daintree Rainforest. The only way to cross the (croc infested) Daintree River in these parts is by car ferry.

Tour operators have been lobbying for a bridge to replace the car ferry - citing long delays to get across.

Bah Humbug.

This car ferry is one of the coolest things in the Daintree. To put a bridge here would just invite over-development of this fabulous area. Take it slow guys, you're on holiday. Or do what we did - cross the river outside 'peak hour'.

This is what you see on the other side.

After driving for about half an hour, heeding the signs regarding crocodiles in the water...

...you reach Cape Tribulation. It's at the end of the bitumen and where the rainforest comes all the way down to meet the sea.

Port Douglas Part II: Nemo and The Reef

Firegazer and I are not really ones for hanging by the beach reading books all day so we filled most of our holiday with other stuff, like diving and snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef. We headed out to the Outer Reef with a medium-sized dive boat which offered certified diving (for Firegazer), snorkelling (for me) and a delicious lunch. As a bonus, being the start of the whale migration, we had humpback whales swimming past our boat. What an amazing thing to see those fabulous creatures breaching in the calm waters near the reef.

It would be a lot easier for all concerned if all reef creatures were named after their characters in Finding Nemo. When our 'head snork (-eller)' said that we would see some Clown Anenomefish* he was greeted with polite smiles. When he said we're off to find Nemo! the kids on the boat pricked up their ears and rushed to be first to jump in the water. Likewise he then pointed out the Dorys, the Gills and all the other characters from the movie.

I'm a bit of a land-lubber and more at home on a mountain holiday than a sea holiday but I thought snorkelling off the Great Barrier Reef was amazing. Apart from all the Finding Nemo characters we saw an extraordinary array of colourful fish, green sea turtles, white-tipped reef sharks and many different types of coral. The water was shallow around the reef and I was amazed to see straight to the bottom in the clear blue water.

*click to enlarge photo bottom left for pic of Nemo swimming in his anemone home

Port Douglas Part I: Where caravans once stood

I tried to book into one of the fancy spas in Port Douglas but they were all booked out. I'm not very good at getting my act together like that.

I eventually got an appointment for a pedicure with a lady who operated out of a room inside a hairdressing salon and it was one of the best things I did all week. She had lived in the area for 17 years and we chatted about Port Douglas, past and present, for an hour.

She told me that when she first moved to the area she could afford to live in Port Douglas (she now lives 20km out); that the main street could keep her entertained for an entire day filled as it was with locally-owned shops in small wooden buildings which displayed locally-made wares and that huge caravan parks spanned the length of four-mile beach providing inexpensive views of the Coral Sea for all.

She laments the loss of locally-owned shops and worries about the effect of the Douglas Council's recent amalgamation with the Cairns City Council on building heights and development. The Douglas Council's height restrictions were apparently that no building could be higher than a coconut tree (or about three storeys).

Isn't this the story of all holiday towns? I think most of us would be able to recount the changes to holiday towns we loved as children or young adults.

As a new visitor to the town, however, I found it to be a fun place with loads of things to do. I loved having shops to look at. At one point Firegazer said but you can shop at these kinds of places in Sydney.

Ah yes, I said, but I never get the time there.