This, That and Every Other Thing

There are many little things that I haven’t shared over the last couple of months, so now is as good as any time to do a little catch up.

Firstly, around home we are well and truly settled here until we get ourselves organised to have our new house built.  We should have final plans soon, so will then start talking to builders.

We don’t see nearly as many birds as we used to, but after hearing a different bird call recently, I was delighted to see a King Parrot high up in the neighbour’s tree.

We can’t have Mick getting bored while he is without a shed, so he has found a couple of little home improvements to do here.  The front porch and back landing have never had any cover, so he has built a little verandah on each.  The front garden was pretty well non existent, so we have now planted a small area with easy care plants.  (We do have another little garden down the side of the house with plants that we brought with us and will then move to our new place.)

Ah! That’s better.  They should start to grow in spring.

The weather had turned decidedly wintery, as it should here at this time of year.  We have had some big frosts and also some pea souper fogs.  This was the view out our back window a little while back.  The spires of St Stanislaus College were shining in the one little bit of sunshine peeking through the wispy fog.

Brrrr!

On Mother’s Day we gave both of our Mums a lovely maiden hair fern.  They looked so nice that I treated us to one as well.  I’m not very good at looking after indoor plants, despite the fact that I had a bedroom full of them as a teenager, but this one is going really well so far and looks so fresh on the table.

I have joined in a birthday fat quarter swap this year and I still haven’t shared the wonderful selection of fabrics I received back in January.  Woops!  I requested Bonnie and Camille.  I love the way they all coordinate so well and can’t believe that there were no duplicates.

I have added two more coordinating fabrics and a grey to go with these to make the Swoon quilt.  It will be a nice, fresh quilt for our bed.  I probably won’t start until I have finished Nature’s Journey. 

My Blog Header was looking a little tired.

So I had a play around and freshened things up. 

I even figured out how to add some pages at the top.  If you have a look in the “Our Motorcycles” page there are a few photos and stories.  I’ll gradually add some more pages to tidy things up further.

Earlier this month three Tibetan monks visited Bathurst to create a Sand Mandala at the Art Gallery.  You can read about it here and here.  They have been here on a few previous occasions, but we have never had the opportunity to see their work.

We visited on the second last day, so were able to see the nearly finished masterpiece.  The Mandala is created from crushed limestone coloured with vegetable dyes.  They pour some sand into a long brass funnel with a fine tip. They tap the funnel to get an even flow of sand onto the work.

The design is named “Tara” .  There are lots of different designs and the monks have them all committed to memory.  It was smaller than I expected and some of the wriggly sections of the design were really intricate.

Apparently, on the following day, once the Mandala is completed they hold a ceremony and dissolve the piece.

It was really peaceful, sitting quietly watching the monks at work.  We were really pleased that we took the opportunity to visit.

So, while I haven’t been blogging as often as I’d like we have still been out and about doing things.  I commented recently that I thought things may settle down a bit now it is winter, but that hasn’t happened as yet.