We are safely home after being away for 3 weeks. It was fun to spend time with family and friends in different surroundings but it is also good to be back and I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.
Here is a quick round-up of what has been happening.
The gifted quilt is now in its new home.
A final farewell to some of the family.
A couple of shots of an approaching storm yesterday. We had to pull off the road as there was a short burst of wind, very heavy rain and some hail. Thankfully, there does not appear to be any damage to the car.
It was a hot, sunny day here and I was able to do 2 loads of washing when we arrived home and get them all dried this afternoon. Now the folding and ironing awaits…………
I know that it is a slightly odd title but it really describes the last 8 days or so.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we are on holidays in Queensland. This is my home state and where we lived for 22 years before moving to Victoria about 18 months ago. I am delighted to be on holidays here and we spent a week at the beach over Christmas with both of our daughters and 2 granddaughters. We have enjoyed spending time with my sister, brother-in-law and brother as well as catching up with several friends.
However, underneath all of the fun and socialising I had an odd, nagging feeling that somehow unsettled me when I least expected it yet I could not pinpoint the source. That was…………until yesterday. I realised this was the first time I had returned to Queensland on holidays from interstate since my parents had died. The odd feeling was coming ‘home’ but Mum and Dad were not here. 2025 will mark the 4th and 24th anniversaries of their deaths respectively. I love and miss them both every day but this trip has turned out to be particularly poignant. I am so glad that I figured out my feelings as I honour their memory.
Welcome to 2025 and a gentle introduction to the new year.
We are currently on holidays in Queensland for a few weeks and spending time with family and friends.
Today we went for a drive to take in some sights and included a short walk at Mapleton Falls National Park. It was a delight to spend some time enveloped by nothing more than silence and the beautiful surroundings.
It is 3 days since we arrived back in Australia from our overseas trip. We were away for 4.5 weeks and visited Scandinavia 9Denmark, Sweden and Norway). I know that a lot of you followed our adventures but if you have not seen the blog here is the link. https://mobilecastle.wordpress.com/
Meanwhile, life is beginning to return to normal here. Bags are unpacked and everything mostly put away. One load of washing done and meals prepared. GMan is making bread. Yesterday we did some shopping. The bonus of a comfortably stocked pantry and freezer is that it was really only milk, cheese and fresh fruit and vegetables that we needed.
Yesterday I was occupied dealing with some admin work as a result of some of the mail that arrived while we were away. Today I have been working on hemming the binding on a quilt. I need to have it finished by Saturday and it is a long way around a queen sized quilt with tiny hand stitches. It will be worth it when finished. I hope to show you the finished product in a couple of days.
There is not too much exciting for blog photos so this is our dinner tonight. I made a big pot of bolognese sauce and the remainder will go in the freezer for future meals.
There has been more doing than writing going on here in the past few days as the countdown is well and truly on. We are off on Sunday on our first overseas trip in nearly five years. It is a relatively short jaunt of two weeks to Honolulu and a couple of spots in California.
My posts while I am away will be on my travel blog, Somewhere, Anywhere so consider following my adventures there.
We have plenty to do in the next couple of days. The packing is well underway but a little tricky as it will be warm in Honolulu but San Francisco, in northern California, is still quite cool and showery. In fact, I am probably taking as much for 2 weeks as I would for 2 months. I have made a couple of tweaks since I took these photos. I am also taking a jacket, vest and scarves which are not shown.
For the warm days in Honolulu.
And the not so warm in San Francisco.
A selection of footwear.
Finally, I added this skirt after making it yesterday. It is navy and white which fits in nicely with several other pieces in my wardrobe. The fabric is a drapey 4-way stretch and not something I necessarily would have chosen myself. I was asked to make a skirt and the lady provided the fabric which had a border print along both edges and since the fabric was very wide I had an unused strip which she was happy for me to use so I decided on this skirt for myself. It is probably a bit shorter than I would normally wear but I have thrown caution to the wind and decided it would be a perfect addition for casual beachside wear.
I will add one more post here on Saturday and I will show you the other sewing project I have been working on today.
I am back after a short hiatus. We travelled to Adelaide and surrounds for about 10 days. It was mostly about catching up with family and friends which seemed to entail multiple very pleasant lunches and a couple of dinners in a variety of establishments.
We also took a couple of trips down memory lane as we revisited homes and places of interest of importance from when we lived in South Australia from 1987 – 2001.
Of course, there was plenty of op shopping in ‘new to me’ op shops. I wrote about some of my finds in my last post. This continued for the whole trip. Today I am doing several loads of washing now that I have unpacked. This includes the various new additions to my wardrobe.
I happened upon an online advertisement for a Banksy art exhibition so we spent a rather thought-provoking couple of hours there one afternoon. I loved the fact that there was quite a bit of background information about the pieces which added significantly to the overall experience.
Finally, no trip to Adelaide is complete without some views over the water. Fish and chips with a view of the sunset from Henley Beach.
A bit further south and this is the view from a lookout at Aldinga.
I retired from full-time, paid employment in July 2019 so it is now 15 months since I was last in the office. My finishing date was pretty much decided at least 2 years prior to my retirement. I did not really contemplate gradually reducing my hours or other strategies to ease into retirement. This bemused many people who continually quizzed me as to what I was going to do when I retired. I did not really have a clear answer which made them even more convinced that I would return.
The last 15 months has been somewhat of a rollercoaster. 6 weeks after my final day in the office, we headed overseas for a much-anticipated 9 week holiday. It was an amazing adventure which we thoroughly enjoyed. Towards the end of the trip GMan and I independently came to the same conclusion – that we would have a break in 2020 and not go overseas. What a fortuitous decision that proved to be. We had previously considered travelling to Scandinavia this year.
Upon our return from overseas towards the end of October we had barely 2 months at home before setting off on a road trip to Victoria. We spent Christmas with family and then planned to visit areas in eastern Victoria and south-eastern NSW but the worst bushfires in living memory crushed that plan. We did manage to visit more family in Canberra and experienced the impact of the smoke first-hand. Not a pleasant experience.
Home again in early January and we imagined that 2020 would be a time to settle into a steady routine. Enter COVID19 and the world seemed to be completely upturned. We were very grateful for the space we had – house and large garden, a well-stocked pantry as well as a garden which supplied at least some of our food requirements, not having paid work to try to do from home or children to homeschool. We were unable to see or visit family and friends for several weeks but this was barely a minor inconvenience compared to what some people have had to endure.
In fact, COVID19 gave us the opportunity to focus on projects around our home. A quick scroll through previous blog posts provides a bit insight. Compost bays, a cold frame, more raised garden beds and finishing the pergola are some of the outdoor improvements. Meanwhile, I prepared meals made predominately from our homegrown produce as well as sewing and mending. Furniture restoration completed.
As restrictions were lifted we resumed some of our activities and interests outside the home. Which brings me to the essence of this blog post.
It is easy to become immersed in a particular interest or activity to exclusion of most others. Therefore, my goal is to identify broad categories and try to include a mix of activities/interests. It is probably not feasible to try to do this each day but I think that it is possible within the timeframe of a week.
After some thought, I have come up with a list of general categories which cover most of the things I do. Yours may be a little different.
Administration Appointments Community engagement Craft and creating Family Friends Garden/outdoor maintenance Garden/outdoor projects Health and fitness Homemaking – regular/frequent tasks Homemaking – seasonal/occasional tasks Planning Relaxation Socialising and entertaining Travel
Of course, some of these definitely overlap and some activities may even cover 3 categories. The list is in alphabetical order so that no-one can question my priorities. I do not envisage making specific lists but it certainly helps to keep things in perspective.
Finally, to those people who were convinced that I would not have enough to do in retirement – you were definitely wrong. My days are occupied, interesting and most of all, fulfilling.
If you were paying careful attention to my last blog post (27th August) you would have noticed that I mentioned that we were about to go away on holidays.
Well, we certainly did and were away for just over 3 weeks before returning home on Sunday. It was a road trip though our home state of Queensland which you can read about on my other blog, Somewhere, Anywhere if you are interested.
There will be plenty of new content coming up soon but meanwhile, here are a couple of images that greeted us upon our return.
We had housesitters staying in our home so that the chickens and gardens would be maintained. Quite aside from the housesitters, the growing conditions must have been simply perfect. This is the haul I picked from the garden on Sunday afternoon.
In December last year we had some Himalayan Ash trees removed. These are classified as an environmental weed in south east Queensland – please refer to the link for details. Naturally, we were keen to revegetate the area as quickly as possibly and have planted a mixed selection of native shrubs and small trees.
It is barely 9 months since these were planted but this callistemon is already putting on a spectacular spring show.
Things have been quiet around here for a couple of days because despite the limitations due to COVID19 we managed to get away for a couple of days.It was great to see some different scenery and catch up with a couple of friends along the way.
If you would like to know more about our short break and see some photos, please pop over to my travel blog, Somewhere, Anywhere. The blog covers our planning and travels, mostly overseas, for the past 8 years. This is the link to our latest jaunt.
This is my first post for 2020 but it does not seem right to be wishing you a ‘Happy New Year’. The bushfire disaster in south-eastern Australia is worse than ever, with more confirmed deaths and property losses.
If anyone asked me where I have been in the 5 days since my last blog post, the best answer would be “in limbo”. We made our way to stay with extended family in Canberra. After record-breaking heat (44C) yesterday, the capital is now covered with a blanket of thick smoke. Several locations, including Old Parliament House, the National Gallery and Questacon are closed and people are being advised to stay indoors. Unfortunately, the smoke seeps into everything but our problems are minimal compared to the areas which are directly impacted.
As you can see from the map below, Canberra is semi-surrounded by fires. The yellow markers are active fires, red is emergency and the blue ones are contained. In some cases a single marker indicates a fire which has burnt an area in excess of 150,000 hectares (about 370,000 acres).
Some of our extended family are in areas closer to the fires so we are constantly trying to keep track of the progress of the fires.
We plan to leave Canberra tomorrow morning and drive home over a couple of days. The western part of New South Wales is not in the high danger area and where we live is south-east Queensland is well away from the current fires.
However, we are still at the beginning of summer and these fires may be just the beginning of a catastrophic fire season as most of the entire country is drought-affected and tinder dry.
organised castle 