Storytime

I just adore Autumn. It's the combination of the settling down of the year, when the heat from Summer has gone, yet the chilled days of Winter are just about to creep in. And then there are the trees!  Living in the Dandenong Ranges means I am surrounded by gorgeous deciduous trees, and although it has been a slow Autumn, it has now hit with a bang. It is just gorgeous. We also have a range of trees in our garden that are showing their beauty.  I love walking out there to admire them. The colours are so inspiring. Watching as they ever so slowly lose their coat of green, and seemingly overnight, appear clad in shades of sunsets. Gusts of wind, like the past few days, and the ground is covered in a flurry of colour. All this natural beauty leaves me tongue tied. I head out and attempt to take photo after photo. Hoping in some manner to capture what I see. It never works. The eye sees so much more than can ever be manually created. Yet I keep tryi...

Some folks will know that I enjoy baking. In fact, daughter (whose skills far surpass my own) and I often venture to cooking classes. I do like a challenge (although life does seem to be offering lots of those lately)...but I enjoy a challenge where I can learn. Even if it is a total failure, you learn. I'm sure I read an article the other day talking about Flearning, which is when you have a failure but learn from it. This week I attempted  created my first vegan cake. I have made vegan cookies before (we have vegan work colleagues, so only fair to share some of the baking love)...but this was my first cake. Of course my first thought was to contact said great-baking-skills-daughter who has created vegan goodies before...and ask for her best recipe. My girl has her own baking blog ---Hurricanesnozbakes- YOU MUST CHECK IT OUT - and she suggested this recipe for Lemon Coconut cake. I must admit to being terrified , worried about cooking with ingredients I have rarely / make t...

At the moment I'm running a writing group for kids. It's only for five weeks but boy am I having fun. Best thing, is that the kids are too! So far we've had a look at character, setting and plot. What the kids have produced have been so much fun. We do a lot of interactive work on the whiteboard (yes whiteboard)...with them offering up solutions to a plot problem...character descriptions....settings. (these photos have nothing to do with the writing club but wanted to share the lovely place we went to for Mother's Day lunch.... The Brass Razu bar)  Some of the children's writing has been amazing....there was the story about Miss Vicki and the T-Rex that roamed the library (the ending was quite sad).  The time traveller who had a time machine in her bedroom. The planet with the giant spider that devours souls. Another planet that had craters that took you to different places and even different times in history. Some of their insights so humorous. I showed ...

Last weekend, a gang from work went out for the day. There was a mini bus, a sandy lunch with visiting bee, a lovely meal to end the day...and a painting experience. We went to Coronet Bay, a Paint and Sip.  The majority of us were very nervous about our artistic abilities. Most of us claiming none. Yet with the help, tutorage and encouragement from Chris, we all left feeling damn proud of ourselves. Brilliant aren't they? The girls as well. What I learnt most on this day, was to look at things differently. Try to see things from a new perspective. Chris had us turn this page upside down and then begin to copy the image in the empty space. To look not at the picture as a whole, but to see the shapes. The squares, the circles, the lines. I found this totally liberating. And I did run out of space, and my fellow is very out of proportion but I was quite surprised by how close it came to the real deal. Then began the painting. The picture I chose was of a ca...

Had a great session last week with one of the children's groups I run at work. This group is for children Prep to Grade 2 but we always get a few younger siblings, and this time we had a few older siblings stay for the duration. The theme was magic. What a blast! I began by pulling a toy  rabbit out of a hat. The kids were not impressed. They could see the puppets in the hat. Okay, I thought, tough crowd! I then did the disappearing coin in the glass trick. That gained a few minutes of 'wow, how did you do that?' Then one smart cookie figured it out and all the magic and glamour was lost. But best was yet to come. A card trick. Now I had practiced for quite a while. And I had them entranced. Each time they picked a card, I magically found that exact card. I repeated this trick over eight times. The kids had a lot of theories on how I did it. I was looking. (turned around, covered my eyes etc) I could see through the cards. (demonstrated this was not ...