Tuesday tidbits (and tails)

This is the only photo from Christmas Day, thanks to J who was the only one who took a photo, as we were putting the food on the table.


The weather has finally improved.  We have had a couple of days of sun now, but that means increased humidity.  I'm not complaining though as anything is better than 8 days with no sun and too much rain.
It's hard to believe that all that rain has caused such damaging flooding north of here. The area affected by flooding is equivalent to the combined size of France and Germany and in some places it's 9 1/2 metres above normal river height, that's about 30 feet high, imagine if that was a tsunami! Over 200,000 people are affected but it.


We have had only very minor flooding in this area. On Sunday we had lunch that is adjacent to a canal off the Noosa River, in the photos below it is only a little above the normal height and that was only because it was high tide, you can just see the wall under the surface of the water.

We had a very nice lunch, the restaurant had big windows/doors that were wide open so we had a beautiful breeze to help keep the heat and humidity to a minimum.

I've started on another quilt top, this one is for my dad, the pattern is from Elizabeth Hartman's book, The Practical Guide to Patchwork. 

Some of the blocks ready to be trimmed to size. I'm using Martinique again as my mum asked if I could make a quilt for my dad using the same fabric that I used in my mum's coin quilt.

It's not even a remotely masculine line so I've tried to de-feminize it by only using the non-floral prints and omitting the apricot colour way and most of the red colour way. I'm hoping it will not look girly when it's finished.

In more exciting news I have decided to........... drum roll please, ta dah, join a challenge. A first for me.  Judy over at Patchwork Times is hosting a 12 month MONOCHROMATIC CHALLENGE. I think hope this is within the realms of possibility for me. I am going to make a block a month, not a quilt a month, I'm still debating exactly what kind of block I'm going to make. This month's colour is YELLOW.  Surprisingly I had more yellow in my stash than I thought, so I don't even have to buy any extra for it, yay. This leads me to my next challenge, I'm going to try to make each block with the fabric I have in my stash. 

Stay tuned to see if 

a) I can decide on a block

b) make one

c) I don't buy any more fabric for the challenge, (I probably won't admit to that if I do)

d) last the year and make 12

I'm very lucky, I have my very own Protector of Quilts.

He's good, he can protect two at the same time.

 He's doing a marvellous job on the two that are basted, and ready to quilt.

The Quilt Protector taking a break from his duties. It's very tiring protecting quilts.

Social butterflies

I have survived a whirl of social activities in paradise this last weekend.

The social outings began on Saturday. Bitchypoo and I had a very nice lunch with my mum and dad at the Boathouse Restaurant in Noosaville,  the view from the restaurant was just beautiful.  Look at that sky, I love spring, beautiful weather and not too warm or humid.

In the afternoon we went to see the new Lexus LFA. It was invitation only and guess who scored an invitation!!!

Now apparently this is a  REALLY REALLY REALLY BIG DEAL, just ask any testosterone filled car enthusiast.  It is THE latest Supercar.  There are currently only 6 LFA's in the world. This one is on it's way to Sydney for the Motor Show then off to Dubai to it's new owner. We weren't allowed to touch it, only look at it. Bitchypoo is a bit of a car enthusiast and thought it was "pimp", I assume that is good, she took lots of photos on my phone as we left the camera at home....again. It's worth, from memory, roughly $750,000 Aus dollars which is about the same $US  or approx 450,000 British Pounds.  I can think of lots of better ways to spend that much money. As you can guess, it didn't really float my boat, but now I can tell everyone I've been this close to an LFA!!! Ha!

On Saturday night it was a girlfriend's birthday get together. We had a really lovely evening with a great bunch of people.

Sunday we drove to Brisbane to go to the Brisbane Food and Wine Festival. You might remember I won tickets to the Cupcake Class and entrance to the festival. Of course as usual, I left my camera at home so only had my phone to take photos, and they are not very good. As it was I nearly forgot to take any photos at all.

 Cupcakes in progress. Neither of us were feeling particularly creative.

We spent the rest of the time at the show taste testing and sampling an awful lot of the products, entering competitions to win cars and all sorts of things I can't remember.  It was a fabulous day out and I'm going to make sure I go next year.

Sunday night we went to Ahmet's Restaurant at Southbank. It's a Turkish restaurant, the same one I went to a few months ago.

A couple more of these were consumed by me, (not bitchypoo). Turkish Delight Martini.

Monday morning we went to the GOMA (Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane) to see the Valentino Retrospective.  A fabulous display of Valentino gowns from 1959 onwards. There were some amazing creations in the display and some not so fabulous too!

All in all another great weekend, and I'm going to need the week to recover!

Tuesday Tidbits (and no tails) - Melbourne weekend

I have just come back from freezing my a*!# off on a long weekend in Melbourne. I am from Melbourne originally, but I haven't lived there for quite a few years.  For an adopted Queenslander, it was pretty darn cold bloody freezing. I was looking forward to wearing all my winter clothes that I never get to wear here. However, the worst thing about Melbourne is having to wear layers of bulky clothing to keep warm and then every time I went inside I would have to strip off really quickly or I would die of heat exhaustion. It was very frustrating, why do all the shops have heating on so high? If I wasn't quick enough I could feel the sweat dripping down my back....eeeeeeeeeeeww
I had both my camera and phone with me at all times and managed to forget to take photos and most of the photos I did take were pretty much crap,  I still don't know how I did that........
So without further ado here are the best of a bad bunch of photos,

Some photos of the Melbourne Craft Show, these were the only pics I took!!!!!

Martinique and chenille quilt

 This quilt won lots but I don't remember who or what or why. I promise I hadn't been drinking.

Karen from Quilts on Bastings, Crop Circles quilt, absolutely beautiful close up.

 A stall full of Kaffe Fassett and yummy chenille, again, have no idea of the name of the stall.

A really bad photo taken with my phone, of a fabulous chinese restaurant in Little Bourke St, Shanghai Village, and the queue outside after we left.

Two of the dishes we ordered, only remembered to take them after we were nearly finished. The one on the left Szechuan fish, (fabulous) and beef in black bean (delicious). Much much better than they look. I highly recommend this restaurant if you want an authentic and very cheap meal. Just remember to go early or you will be like all those people in the above photo, standing in the queue for ages.

 Another superb meal of Lamb and Sumac Pie with Tzatziki at Brown Sugar a lovely little cafe/bistro in Melbourne CBD

A couple of photos showing the grey weather, and people rugged up on Saturday.

Chokolait, where we had a really nice hot chocolate.  I overdosed on hot chocolate on the weekend. We started at Max Brenner, (I've decided I don't like Max Brenner any more it's too sickly even for me, a chocaholic). We tried numerous times to go to the Lindt store, but as half of Melbourne were there too we gave it a miss, maybe I'll try next time.

I love this building it just reminded me of Paris, and was amazing to see in the middle of the CBD, so cute, even the woman who came out of the building with her dog, looked Parisienne. Look blue sky on Sunday morning!!!!!

 

Beautiful views from the hotel room on Sunday, finally some sunshine.

I can't wait to go back again, when it's a bit warmer.  I don't care if I don't get to wear my winter clothes again.

A day of international culture, sort of

Yesterday was the French Festival in Brisbane, in honour of Bastille Day on Wednesday the 14th..  It was a beautiful day, and as neither Renata or I had anything planned  Renata came over and we drove down to Brisbane, with Renata's daughter in tow.
Unfortunately every other inhabitant of South East Queensland thought it would be a good idea too. It was busier than Disneyland.  There were so many people there. I am sure the organizers would have been amazed and very happy at how popular it was.  We arrived at about 1.30pm and it was packed. The food stalls had huge queues and it was very difficult to work your way through the crowds.

Originally we had planned to have lunch there, wander around, maybe go across to the city and have a look at the shops and then come back to Southbank for an early dinner and then drive back up to the coast.

There was no way we were going to have lunch there unless we were willing to stand in a queue for ages, so we changed our plans and went to the restaurant for lunch instead of dinner. Yumm

The restaurant is called Ahmets, a fabulous Turkish restaurant at Southbank.  

Check out the decor.

We had really lovely meals, although we ordered way too much, they were huge serves and couldn't finish them.  We also had to try  the Turkish Delight Martini, OMG, very sweet but yummmmm.

I think Renata's had plenty.

The Mezze plate that we shared, doesn't actually look at all appetising in this photo,  does it!

Pepper stuffed with lovely fragrant rice, dolmades, falafels,  salad and a mixed vegetable dish.

My dish of Lamb kebabs with rice, salad and a little bit of flat bread.

Renata's lamb and eggplant puree.

None of those dishes photographed well, but they were very very nice indeed. In fact I could say some very rude things about what they look like, but I won't. The atmosphere was great too. On Saturday night they have belly dancers as entertainment.

After lunch we tried the French Festival again, it was still very busy.  Even when we went back for the third time in the early evening there were still crowds of people.