Hello (indoors) Halloween!
Yesterday it rained and it rained and it rained. So what were we to do? Decorate the house in preparation for Halloween of course! Out come the pumpkins, the bats, the skeletons and the skulls. Out came the bats, the rats and the orange and black candles.
We LOVE Halloween.
I added a new painting into the mix - the "scream" meets "grim" (from Billy and Mandy!). The weather this time of year is too unpredictable for us to do much to the outside of the house and yard. It is all about the indoors decorations for the moment. I'm not sure if we will ever tire of Halloween ... but I do like taking the time to "dress" the house for each season.
It's time for baseball!
This last weekend was the opening weekend for 2017-18 baseball. Hooray. There is something about the game, and the people that play the game here, that I really enjoy. It is a niche sport ... so only the truly keen get involved. It makes for a small but usually fun community.
The boys both lost their games. That's OK. The weather was nice and the boys had fun. We went down to the Diamond to watch the club's Division 1 team play on Sunday ... they had a win. So it ended up being a weekend of baseball. Luckily it is early enough in the school term for the boys to not have to worry about juggling school work and sport. That will be a challenge for upcoming weeks.
Let the season play!
And the collards are done
A few months ago we planted collard seeds in our vegepod. By July they were on their way. Last weekend we finally harvested them. They ended up being enormous.
We followed the cooking instructions from the cookbook we bought while travelling through North Carolina last year: Deep Run Roots (by Vivien Howard).
Perhaps surprisingly, the collards were delicious! (Maybe not so surprising really, we have had canned collards previously ... something fresh from the garden is almost always going to taste better than its canned equivalent). It took about 2 hours to cook them which I suppose its fitting because it took us 4 months (at least) to grow them.
Here is our finished pot of collards:
Enter the tenor saxophone
Wow, I love the sound of a tenor saxophone. After 4 fours of listening to an alto saxophone (which is still a very cool sound), the new tenor saxophone is an exciting addition to the music played on our house.
We have heard a guitar, drums, trumpet, alto saxophone, french horn ... and now a tenor saxophone. The tenor saxophone and the french horn are probably my favourites. Our beagle would agree. He will sit near the boys of they are playing the saxophone or the horn. He will walk a mile .. away ... if he hears a trumpet!
I am happy just to hear music being practiced and enjoyed. I hope the boys continue to play and enjoy music (in whatever shape that is) for years to come.
Halloween houses
In prior years I have made Halloween tags ... 31 tags to celebrate each day in October. I love the project; it marks the start of one of my favourite times of the year. Ultimately though, it became a huge task because I was making 6 tags for each day (to share with family and friends). 6 x 31 tags = LOTS OF TAGS!
This year I decided to change things up. I really love the "Village" die series produced by Sizzix and Tim Holtz. So my grand plan is to make everyone on my tag list a spooky Halloween Manor house ...
I'm getting there. It is in fact quite time consuming but there is something lovely about hitting the daily grind pause button to create a tiny little haunted house ... I know. I'm crazy ;-)
Pardon my underpainting
Orange is blue and green is red and somehow yellow is purple. My head is spinning.
This week we started a painting that is to be finished over two weeks. This week we painted the underpainting using complementary colours. This, in theory, make sense. This, in practice was challenging. It was surprisingly difficult to look at a green guitar and know to paint it in red. The same applies with painting a yellow background in purple.
Time flew. I love that for that moment, while I am in class, my biggest decision is whether a certain shade of purple is the exact opposite of a particular shade of yellow. Awesome.
My actual painting of the still life - a green guitar - wasn't awesome. Maybe next week when we go back and paint over the painting with the true colours I might be able to salvage my painting ...
This is the still life we were working from ...
We have collard greens growing
One of the joys of travel is being exposed to new things, new ideas, new tastes. On our journey to Georgia and the Carolinas at Christmas time we we introduced to collard greens. Part of the same family as cabbage and broccoli, collard greens (or simply collards) are similar, I think, to kale.
We don't have a huge crop - 2 or 3 plants at most - but still so very cool. I'm looking forward to harvesting them and eating them with some smoked meat and maybe some cornbread. (Hopefully persuading the chef in the house to smoke some brisket or pulled pork! ... I'll give making cornbread a go).
Yep, travel is a great way of "discovering" new tastes and I love bringing those ideas and tastes home; incorporating them into our world and sharing them with our friends.
The work of Albert Verschuuren
There is a magic in pottery. I love the handmade shapes and the gorgeous one-off colours and variations. I could happily fill my space with both the functional and the purely decorative. (I secretly covet being able to serve all our meals from handcrafted pieces.)
I am very fortunate to have been given a few pieces - bowls and pots made by Albert Verschuuren. His mastery of clay is amazing. His work makes me smile. There is truly something special about seeing the work of a master craftsman. Imagine if we were all able to slow down and take time to learn to master a craft or a skill ... imagine if we took the time to dive deep into the learning. I wonder if it would change our perspective ...
Via Byron Bay
What is the best way to get to Lismore? If the weather is gorgeous and time is not pressing then via Byron Bay is the best way to get there (possibly it is the best way to get anywhere ...).
Life gets in the way sometimes and somehow it has been years since I have been to Byron Bay. The boys had never been there, which is a shame because it is a beautiful place. Hippy meets hipster.
Parking is a premium but we managed to find a car park and found a place to have fish and chips for lunch. Delicious. Lunch was followed by a wander down to the waterfront to breathe in the sea air, slow down to the pace of a beachside town and just watch the mix of people go by. I could have happily pulled up a seat at the beach front bar and enjoyed a long afternoon at the beach but alas we needed to push on ... Lismore here we come.
Time to breathe
We made it to school holidays. We made it through a very busy term. I am relieved. It is just a short holiday - two weeks but enough to give us a time to breathe. The weather is just about perfect: 24C. Sunny. Nice.
We drove up to Redcliffe and had fish and chips for lunch. It was totally unplanned and thoroughly enjoyable.
I struggle with feeling it is OK just to sit, reflect, breathe. Surely we should be doing, achieving, seeking awesome? Today though, I'm completely on board with sitting, reflecting, breathing. Awesome can wait. Today the sun is shining and the weather is perfect. Today, the universe has given us a tiny glimpse of the bigger picture and I'm all good to sit back and admire.