1000 Miles Away (Road Trip)

"Estimated time of arrival 9.30 a.m.
Been up before the sun and now I'm tired before I even begin."

Ah, classic Hoodoo Gurus. Love that song! Apart from the ETA being slightly different (more like 4 or 5pm !), I think it'll be the theme song for our trip! Instead of resting up before we leave, we've had several rather late nights this last week, getting everything ready, so we will definitely be up before the sun and tired before we even begin!

Yes, we're leaving home Saturday morning at 0300 hours (and in the words of another well-known quote from Good Morning Vietnam... OMG THAT'S EARLY! ), meeting our travelling partners at the Burpengary BP Travel Centre, filling up the tanks, grabbing a coffee and heading north.

The ultimate destination is Cardwell, on the Hinchinbrook Channel, however we are only going as far as Cannonvale the first day. Cannonvale is on the road out from Proserpine to Airlie Beach. We were only going as far as Mackay, except that it seems rather difficult to book one night's accommodation there during school holidays.

We figure it will be about a 14 hour drive (hence the ungodly departure time), although everyone you talk to seems to have varying estimates. "Oh yeah, we've done Mackay in 10 hours", for example. Sure, OK, but were you sticking to the speed limit?? According to the RACQ Trip Planner it is 1078 kms from our place to Cannonvale, then another 434 from Cannonvale to Cardwell. (Not quite 1000 miles, but around 940 anyway)

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for the early start, I'm sure I will be OK. I do feel rather sorry for Cheyenne though, as she will be spending the majority of her 6th birthday in the back seat of the Navara. Yes, her birthday is the first day of the school holidays, and she'll be stuck in the car for 14 hours! We do have a portable DVD player in the car for her, and she has a brand new Nintendo DS and 3 games, which we got her for her birthday, but it isn't as fun as having friends over for a party. At least she'll be able to say "Mummy and Daddy took me on holidays for my birthday!"

Anyway, I really need to go and finish the last minute packing, then see about getting the fan belt replaced on the Navara... in between the million and one other things I still need to do. Don't even get me started! Steve did have a spare fan belt "just in case", but notices last night there's a worn patch/hole in the current one.

Hopefully I will be able to get to an internet cafe while we are away, to blog some more about our holiday. Stay tuned.

Goodbye Mrs J

Cheyenne's Prep teacher, Kelly Johnson, left last Friday to go on maternity leave, so as of this week, PKJ has had a new teacher, Miss Crabtree.

Mrs J has been a fantastic teacher and will be missed very much by Cheyenne and her classmates. The children are sad to see her go, but also excited about (hopefully) getting to see her new baby when it is born. Mrs J is hoping to be back at work sometime next year to see her Prep class "all grown up" as Grade 1 students.

Cheyenne may not know it yet, but your first teacher makes a permanent impression on you, which will shape your attitude towards your education. She is very lucky to have had a great teacher like Mrs J for Prep, and it seems like Miss Crabtree may be just as lovely.

Cheyenne with Mrs Johnson at her Going Away Party.

Dramatic hair? Yeah! Yeah!

Well, I decided that it has been too long since I had anything done with my hair. Just before my birthday, in October last year, in fact. Doesn't time fly?

As I mentioned in my post back then, I was sick of spending lots of money and only getting subtle (read "totally unnoticeable") results. This time I went to a different hairdressing salon, with younger, "trendier" hairdressers. You know the sort... overdyed black hair with blue or purple streaks. I figured anyone with bright blue in their hair would not err too much on the side of caution, lol.

Turned out to be a good decision, I think. Nothing cautious or subtle about my hair this time. It's dramatic, and I love it.

The funniest part of this is that it still took Steve a full 5 minutes of me standing next to him, to notice! Then his eyes went wide, he started laughing, and asked why my hair is pink. "That's the colour my hair is now, that's why." The blonde foils at the front have picked up some of the red, but they tell me that should settle down after a wash or two. Not that I mind being a strawberry blonde though. Steve says it will grow on him, and all that matters is that I'm happy with it. No worries there, as I couldn't be more happy with it. Not so sure it will match the outfit I plan on wearing to a friend's wedding, but I'll worry about that later, lol.

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day...

Teach a man to fish...

...and he will spend every spare dollar on boats, fishing gear and bait! (not quite how that saying goes, but definitely a lot more accurate than the original)

Well, since it has been nearly a month since our trip away at the Rainbow Beach Family Fishing Classic, I thought I should stop being slack and finally post about it.

This was the last year that Cheyenne and I would be going for the entire competition, since we will not be taking her out of school once she starts Grade 1, and the comp is not held during the school holidays. As they have done since they retired, Steve’s parents came along with us for the ten days.
The weather was fabulous and the fishing was good. The accommodation? Well, let’s just say we will never stay in that unit again. A certain real estate needs a slap upside the head and an education in maintaining accurate listing photos on their website. We had been booked into Kagari No.2, but thankfully, due to a last minute cancellation had changed our booking to Kagari No.1 (the front unit with more yard space)… and it is just as well !
If we had ended up in the converted garage (the back unit) I daresay Consumer Affairs would have been hearing about how the photos which are supposedly of Unit 2, are actually of Unit 1. In fact, Unit 2 is clearly not worth the amount of money required to rent it (for 10 days it was only $36 more for the front unit), and that is before you take into account the dodgy electrical wiring in both units (the electrician who came to fix one of our power points said he had never seen anything like it in all his years of electrical work) and the pint sized hot water system which is shared by both units!

Steve managed to get a couple of daily prizes for his fish, Cheyenne scored some random draw kids prizes and Steve’s dad jagged a nice Waeco esky in a random weight fish draw. Steve caught a stonker whiting (.605 grams gilled and gutted) on about the third night of the comp and it stayed on the board as the heaviest, right up until the second last night, when it was knocked off by a somewhat dubiously caught whiting that went .700 grams, gilled and gutted. The woman in question claimed it was caught in the surf, but it was dark skinned, like fish trapped in lakes and estuaries, and her husband is known to work alongside pro net fishermen. Nothing could be proven however, so she took out first prize ($400) for Overall Heaviest Whiting and Steve’s took out second prize ($200).

All in all it was a good week and a half. Shame I’m missing out next year.

Steve with the 2nd Heaviest Overall Whiting

Compare the sizes. The Whiting that Cheyenne is holding is around 26cm long, Steve's was about 47cm.

How NOT to drive on the beach! This poor guy thought he was following the shoreline of the beach at low tide, until he ended up on a sandbank and sunk up to the sidesteps on his Rodeo. They borrowed Steve's snatch strap but were unable to shift it. This was taken after the tide had come in and was on the way out again. The tow truck dragged it out at low tide for the sum of $200.

Trash or Treasure?

It's that time of year again... Council kerbside pickup time!

If one man's trash is another man's treasure, then this time of year is sheer paradise for scavengers, myself included.

Every year Steve says "We are NOT going to bring home any more junk this year!" Every year we still do. We can't help ourselves (I believe I'm genetically predisposed to it). It's part curiosity, part klepto, with a little bit of family "hoarder" genes thrown in.

As I type this I can hear other scavengers driving slowly, cruising past the piles of junk in utes or cars with trailers, ready to bring home the spoils. Sure, a lot of people do this to find items to sell at markets or on eBay, but I only bring home things I can use... or at least had good intentions to use at the time. The beauty of this is that, if for some reason, when you get your collected item home, it isn't quite right or what you wanted, you can always throw it back out on your own junk pile, so that you aren't stuck with it.

Over the past few years I've found several planter stands, glazed terracotta garden pots, some chairs, a couple of tiny decorator side tables, Cheyenne's trampoline (best score yet - it only needed a new mat, which we bought for $60 from a trampoline supply place), and various other treasures.


This year we don't really have time for a proper trawl around the neighbourhood, as we're busy packing for our 10 day trip to Rainbow Beach, but I've still managed to collect a few decent finds. A couple of hanging plant rings (the sort you attach to a wall and slip a round pot plant into), and this lovely round wicker table, which will do nicely on my front verandah. A bit dusty (nothing a good wipe over couldn't fix) and it has a couple of tiny nicks in it, but otherwise, it's perfect.

We also found a backboard for a basketball hoop (one of Steve's brothers had been looking for one for his kids), and a ladder for an above-ground swimming pool. Steve thought it would be just right for placing over our side fence when Cheyenne goes next door to play with Jayden. Turns out he was right! It's the perfect height, and means I will no longer have to lift Cheyenne over the fence to Jayden's or vice versa.

Not bad for a morning's work!

"X" Marks the Spot

The council is holding a "tree planting event" in our neighbourhood. According to the leaflet, we are "invited" to make our neighbourhood "a cooler, shadier, greener, more beautiful and carbon-friendly place by planting street trees."

Oh, really?

When I saw that ours was one of about a dozen streets in the area to be receiving trees, I was not excited by the prospect. To say that I was unamused would be an understatement.

Let me put it into perspective. The council has clearly gone this route before around here. Several streets around here, including ours, have large Leopard trees. They drop their seed pods all over the footpaths and make a mess, but at least they are useful as shade trees. Most of these are fairly well established, so they were obviously planted years ago. The most recent round of plantings occurred not long before we bought our house (9 years ago), and they appear to be some sort of Lilly Pilly, although I've never seen any of them in flower or growing berries, so they're not providing any "beauty". Most of them are no more than about 5 feet high, so they don't provide much shade either. There was a half dead specimen planted outside our place when we moved in, but we soon sorted it out. I've no idea what species they intend to plant this time, but we already have enough trees in our street.

Two days ago they marked out the spots where the holes will be dug in preparation for the planting this coming Saturday. Every house that doesn't already have a tree or shrub out the front, was marked with a blue cross. This means they plan to have a tree in front of every house. Every single house! (So much for being "invited") We already have less than average visibility in our street due to the curve in the road and the fact that people who live on the bend, park their cars outside on the street. We don't need the visibility restricted even more by all these new trees.

Apparently this planting is "part of a neighbourhood enhancement project, identified by the community". Well, as rate payers, we are part of the community and nobody asked us if we wanted a tree planted outside! If they're so hell-bent on greening up the city and creating an "urban forest", maybe they should start in the new estates that don't have any trees! Council is committed to plant 2 million trees in Brisbane over 4 years to grow this urban forest, as they put it. Great for the environment, sure, but living in an "urban forest" didn't work out so well for the residents of The Gap during those huge storms, did it?

Turns out though, that you can phone the local member and have your name and address put on a list to not receive a tree. Apparently they would rather people who objected didn't get a tree in the first place, than have people digging them up later on.

If that's the case, they should have printed that fact on their leaflets! Not everyone will realise this, and since a lot of people won't want the trees, my guess is there will be a lot of trees getting dug up in the coming weeks.

I'm off to scrape blue paint off my footpath.

Got Craft?

(With appologies for dodgy formatting - actual blog looks nothing like the preview!)

Thought I'd share some of my recent craftwork.

The first photo is of the card I made for my Mum (identical one for my Mother-in-Law), for Mothers Day. I just love how easy Rollagraph stamps are, and I love this colour combination.

I really am very slack with my scrapbooking - I've yet to scrap any of Cheyenne's birthdays and years of photos are piling up ! I've got plenty of pages planned out and I've bought co-ordinating papers and embellishments for several... I just need to sit down and do them!

To combat my procrastination, I meet with a few other ladies once a month to scrapbook. The aim is to complete a single or double page layout and maybe even finish off some other pages afterwards.

Left to my own devices, I prefer clean, simple pages, where the photo is the dominant feature, however I really liked these particular layouts, which were Kaszazz workshops.

The red and blue layouts combined scrapbooking with a couple of my other loves - stamping and embossing.

They are probably more "fussy" than I would normally do, but I think they work well with the black and white photos.

I'm not normally a big fan of circles in scrapbooking... well, circles in general are ok, just not circular photos. It's a bit like having 70s style, rounded corners on photos - it dates them, and everyone will know you were following a fad.

This is one half of a double page layout, done at a workshop. I'm not so fond of the circles, but the colours matched my chosen photos perfectly.

Isn't it funny where inspiration comes from? KaiserCraft have a nice range of rhinestone words and "believe" is just one of them. I'd had this stashed away in a drawer.

This workshop was showcasing the watermark stamping technique, using VersaMark ink. (background is randomly stamped with watermark butterflies)

I had several photos of Cheyenne, in her fairy dress, and "believe" seemed like the perfect title.

This one is not a workshop - it's all me. My usual, clean, simple style, showcasing one of the best photos I have of Cheyenne, taken by my friend Lauren. I find it hard to get any decent shots of Cheyenne, mainly due to her inability to stay still for more than a few seconds, and her unwillingness to do anything I ask... combined with a less-than-stellar camera.

Once again, "serenity" was one of a number of random chipboard words that I've bought (compulsively) from various craft shows, and it just seemed a perfect fit for this page.