Where is Summer?

It has been Wet Wet Wet and downright cool at times.  I am still wearing my winter PJ's to bed!  

The jacarandas were a little later to flower this year, and I think they weren't as spectacular as in recent years.  This street is lined with them, and I love how the pavements are carpeted in jacaranda blossoms. Since this photo, they have all turned to mush from the rain.  No complaints though, our district really needs the rain.
 

I have made some Christmas tags. This time I constructed some Christmas fabric by cutting up ribbon, cord, threads etc and covering them with part of an old chiffon scarf and sewing all over with embroidery thread.  The card was painted roughly in gesso and dried over a couple of days. A couple of pieces of card are dress labels (not my original idea, but, sorry, can't remember where I read that). It always gives me a thrill to recycle something. Tragic!?? 
I used some crayons and scribbled over to get the background colour.  Cut out some triangles from my 'fabric' and glued them on.  The trunks are snippets of the scarf edging.  I love making cards and tags even though they are very time consuming.

Calming down

I needed some calming down after last week.  Everything was getting a bit on top of me, so this past weekend we took off to a camp site to meet some neighbourhood friends from 20 years ago when we lived in Brisbane.
We are not campers (especially not me) and they set up their tent for us and they did all the arrangements.  All we had to take was our linen and a bit of food and drink.  It was great fun to catch up.

Here are some 'calming' photos.

















Our humble abode for one night.


This evening we have has some beautiful rain and our rain-water tank is full to overflowing at last.  While some parts of our country have been in flood we have been crying out for rain.  Hope it keeps up for a few more days.
Don't care that I have two loads of washing on the line!! I figure it will eventually dry and it is getting an extra rinse.


As far as crafting goes - nada- but as hubby is going away fishing for 4 days on Friday, I feel some serious sewing and crafting coming on......

Rainbow Beach

From start of 1991 til end of 1998 we lived in this most beautiful part of the world, Rainbow Beach, Queensland, Australia.
It was a lovely place to bring up the children, but as they got older we found we had to move closer to schools and civilization. Our parents were also needing us closer as they battled with various illnesses.
We went back after ten years away, and explored our favourite haunts again. We stayed with friends who had the wonderful boat you can see in the pictures, and they own a unit with views to the beach. It was good to go back and see how much the place had grown. We were a little nostalgic, but in the long term, we agree we made the right choice to leave at the time we did.

Top Left: Double Island Point
Bottom Left: Driving across the point
Top Middle: View of Carlo Sand Blow ( an unusual phenomenon where a huge sand formation sits atop the mountain - Captain Cook was the first to sight this)
Second Middle: View of the "coloured sand" cliffs from which Rainbow Beach got it's name
Third Middle: Driving along the beach from Noosa (Noosa North Shore)
Fourth Middle: Boat anchored in the Great Sandy Straits - between the mainland and Fraser Island
Top Right: Our picnic spot on Fraser Island (calm side)
Second Right: Freshwater track from the beach to Rainbow Beach township (Beach from Dble Island point closed to traffic due to high tides etc)
Third Right: Leisha Track across Double Island Point
Fourth Right: Our swimming spot on Fraser Island

If you ever come to Queensland make sure you include Rainbow Beach and Fraser Island in your itenerary, you won't be disappointed! Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world and has some spectacular rainforests and the purest blue lakes......

Oh happy days!

It's a funny ol' day

It started off at dawn with this rainbow and the promise of some much needed rain. Well it rained all right. In fits and starts all day - sometimes sunshine - sometimes squall. At lunch time we had what I can only describe as "ice rain". It was similar to hail, but much finer and a lot of it. A little dog from the neighbourhood was running around the front of our yard and he had all these little icy particles over him. Very comical. Our dog was much wiser and stayed on her sugar bag mat on our porch out of the wind and rain and ice. As I write, the sun is out again but who knows for how long???