Tag Archives: birthday

Birthday Outing

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Today is GMan’s birthday and coincidentally we arranged to go to Melbourne with the express purpose of going to the exhibition of French Impressionism at the National Gallery of Victoria. It includes over 100 artworks drawn from the extensive collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

However, the first thing that caught our attention was before we even entered the gallery. The bare plane trees on the footpath outside the gallery were adorned with a series of threads of paper cranes as today is the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. This modest yet powerful memorial was appreciated by many people passing by.

The exhibition is very popular so there were lots of people around but still enough space to view all of the paintings as well as the detailed information adjacent to each.

Here are a few photographs of some that particularly caught my eye.

Entrance to the village of Osny by Paul Gaugin.

Two peasant women in a meadow by Camille Pissarro.

There were 19 Monet works in the exhibition. Some were quite familiar subjects such as waterlilies, the Japanese bridge in the garden at Giverny and haystacks but here are a couple of less well-known pieces.

Road at La Cavée, Pourville

Boulevard Saint Denis Argenteuil in winter

Finally, a view from inside the foyer of the gallery.

After the gallery adventure we headed back the Elio’s Place, a small European bistro in Flinders Lane for a birthday lunch. Then it was a couple of errands before catching the train home. It was a full and fun day out.

All Lit Up

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Yesterday was my birthday. No special milestones but simply another year around the sun. It was a quiet day but as with each Sunday for the past several months I played Scrabble with a couple of other people I have met. Yesterday was one of my more successful outings as I won 3 of the 5 games that we played.

This year I shared my birthday with Easter Day, the first time this has happened since 2014.

As part of the Easter Festival in our town the tower on Mt Tarrengower is lit up. I like to think that was in my honour!

Thank you to everyone who sent birthday wishes. They are really appreciated and I am feeling very loved.

Patchwork – Pink & Pyjamas

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I began a new sewing project today. This is the first block of a patchwork quilt I am making for my elder granddaughter. It is for her 18th birthday in December. One block done, 41 to go.

Most of the fabric has been randomly collected from op shops and offcuts from various previous sewing adventures. However, there will be some from a particularly special piece. The small pale pink squares have history. They are from some leftover fabric from a dress which my mother made for herself – probably close to 30 years ago. From those leftovers I made a dress for my granddaughter which she wore on her first birthday.

This is not a great photo but you get the general idea. It was from an Enid Gilchrist pattern which I had made many time before and numerous times since.

The other patchwork was for the boxer shorts which I mentioned in my last post. I had rather optimistically thought that it would be a simple matter of adding a strip of fabric into the side seams and a bit at the top to extend the overall length of the crotch.

As I began to unpick the side seams it became obvious that the construction method was appalling and regardless of any alterations that I might make, the existing seams were not robust enough to stand up to much wear at all. So, I altered my plan and unpicked the entire garment. By this time it became obvious why they were not a great fit. The pieces bore only minimal resemblance to the pattern I had.

I used the excess length of the original trousers to add pieces to be able to recut all of the pieces for the boxer shorts using my own pattern. I used flat felled seams for joining the extra pieces as well as the main construction as I always do. These seams are great as there are no raw edges on the inside as well as being extra strong due to the two rows of stitching.

This photo shows the randomly joined pieces of fabric before I cut out the pattern pieces. I did not have enough fabric nor the desire to match the pattern.

It was a bit of a fiddle but I now have a pair of boxers which are comfortable. The various joins are really barely visible.

Blue is Best

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I generally stick to a relatively small palette of colours when choosing my clothes. Black, white, navy and grey are the neutrals I wear. I like strong colours with a blue undertone and my favourites are cobalt blue and cherry red along with almost any other shade of blue as well as emerald green.

It is clear that I am not alone in sticking to a narrow range of colours.

This is my elder granddaughter yesterday on her 17th birthday. She was excited to be wearing her new blue dress out to dinner.

Coincidentally, a photo popped up in my Facebook memories a couple of days ago. It was a blue dress I had made for her 8th birthday gift in 2015.

This photo of her wearing it was taken about 15 months later.

Her high school formal is early next year and the dress she has chosen is blue, of course. In fact, her motto could almost be, “Any colour, as long as it is blue”.

A Berry Birthday

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Well, today is my birthday and has been quite unlike any other.  Not bad………..just different.  Thanks to the current coronavirus outbreak, we are mostly staying at home and today was no different.

We often celebrate birthdays by going out to dinner and a few days ago GMan found that a seafood restaurant near us is doing takeaways including grilled fish and chips.  However, they are closed on Mondays so we have decided to have that treat tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I planned and cooked my own birthday dinner.  A foray to the garden yielded snake beans (my new favourite variety), choy sum and raspberries.

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We had a vegetable stir-fry and followed it up with dessert of chocolate cake (gluten-free, of course) and fresh raspberries.  I really could not have asked for a more delicious meal despite having to prepare it myself.

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Tomorrow I will post the recipe for the cake for anyone who is interested.

A Marathon Milestone

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Most of April seems to have slipped by in a whirl of socialising.  The reason behind it all was my birthday.  Not just any birthday, but my 60th birthday which is quite a milestone.

The celebrations were nicely spaced out over about 3 weeks and included lunch with my work colleagues early in the month followed by a morning tea at work for all of the April babies, 6 days in Tasmania with GMan and finally, a lunch for family and friends on Sunday.

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GMan and I with the amazing cake which was a fitting finale to a lovely meal and a fantastic few weeks of celebrating.

Everything should settle down to the regular routine now and hopefully blog posts will return to reasonably normal intervals.

 

Somewhere Different

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We have been to Melbourne for a couple of days.  The reason was to visit our daughter and celebrate her birthday.  However, I managed to sneak in a spot of shopping.

Last year I got rid of my knee-high black boots as the heel was simply higher than what I was comfortable wearing.  I had been debating for some time about replacing them and I finally found a pair that I was happy would suit my needs.

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I wore them for most of the past two days, including quite a bit of walking and they are very comfortable.  I am really pleased with my purchase and expect they will last me quite a few years.

My other purchase was at a small, independent fabric shop in the northern suburb of Ivanhoe.  There were lots of beautiful winter fabrics but I bought a piece of linen to make something for myself next summer – probably a blouse of some description.

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I fell in love with the colour and pattern of this piece and am sure it will make a gorgeous garment.

 

The Festival of Y (My Birthday)

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Today is my birthday and GMan and I both managed to organise the day off.

In one of our local papers last week there was an article about a walking trail in a nearby National Park.  It follows an route of the old railway track between Landsborough and Mooloolah and even goes through an old tunnel.  When we read about this opportunity which is almost on our doorstep we decided that we would have to check it out.

Today was the day, so we set off on the return walk of about 7km which included a slight detour onto a side track.

The southern entrance to the trail.

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Some of the vegetation along the way.

Looking for the bats that live in the tunnel.  We did see them – tiny bats in a dark cluster on the roof of the tunnel.

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View of the northern entrance to the tunnel.

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After our walk we headed to the Glasshouse Mountains lookout where we had a picnic barbecue lunch and enjoyed the bush surroundings.

It was a great opportunity to spend some time enjoying the delights of our local area during the week when most people are at work and there was barely anyone else around.

Cause for Celebration

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I missed writing a blog post last night as I went out to dinner with my mother and brother.  The occasion was my mother’s birthday.

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While this year was not what is generally regarded as a ‘milestone’ birthday it was particularly significant to me.

8 months ago Mum was not in the best of health and over the next 3 months declined further until her open heart surgery in June.  We were all well aware of the very real possibility that she may not get to celebrate her next birthday.  However, the surgery was a success and Mum has recovered exceptionally well.  So, it is with great joy that we were able to to celebrate her birthday yesterday evening.

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Happy Birthday, Mum!  May there be many more.

Happy Birthday

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On this day, 33 years ago my life changed forever with the arrival of my first-born child.

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There was no internet, Skype, Instagram or Facebook.  We did not even think to take a photo while in hospital.  This is the first photo of our newborn daughter at 7days, once we were home from hospital.

It seems like yesterday but so much has happened in those intervening years.

There have been highs, lows and plenty of challenges but I am so proud of what she has achieved and the woman she has become.

2015-09-03 02Happy Birthday, darling and best wishes for an amazing future.