When it comes to the little things not much has changed.

I was flicking through old posts and I came across this one from 2008, 100 things in the world I love.

Really not much has changed since I made that post on Nov 24, 2008. Speaking of the number 8, this little corner of the Internet that I call my own turns 8 in March! Wow!

Here is the list from 2008, I’ve changed one or two

1. Dew drops
2. Jacarandas
3. Botanical gardens
4. Hot chocolate
5. Live music
6. Christmas ornaments
7. Honeygold Mangoes
8. Kitchenware stores
9. Salad
10. Gum trees
11. Oxfam
12. Lavender
13. The markets
14. Liberty prints
15. Thunderstorms
16. Ginger beer
17. Soft hair (I’m guessing I meant freshly washed hair)
18. Photography
19. The sound of cicadas
20. Folk
21. Msn Ahh the days of MSN Messenger and ICQ before that. Nowadays it is Skype, sweet sweet Skype.
22. The Mountain Goats
23. Ginger nuts
24. Patterns
25. Postcards
26. Christmas
27. Mowing the lawn
28. The smell of the rain
29. Polished floors
30. Going bush
31. The dairy section
32. Dresses
33. Window seats
34. Handkerchiefs
35. Pesto
36. Pain au Chocolat
37. Cherries
38. Colour
39. Falling snow
40. Reading
41. Cloves
42. Country roads
43. Rocking chairs
44. DIY
45. My family
46. Fresh flowers
47. The Farm
48. Roast chicken
49. Book shops
50. Pot plants
51. Sea kayaking
52. Soup
53. Lush
54. Melbourne
55. Pink (colour)
56. ABC Fora. Now rebadged as ABC Big Ideas -> I still love it.
57. Recycling
58. Girraween
59. Bed linen
60. SES
61. My camera
62. Morocco
63. The beach
64. 4zzzfm
65. Cooking
66. Marigolds
67. Bollywood
68. Cake
69. Central Asia
70. Tupperware
71. The library
72. Free range eggs
73. Kitchen aid
74. Iceland
75. Weddings
76. Ice cream
77. Fairy lights
78. Rosemary
79. Milk
80. Internet banking
81. Ikea
82. Henna
83. Lip balm
84. Brisbane
85. Green grass
86. Water
87. Tetris I used to play a lot of Tetris. I’ll insert Figgjo Flint Lotte in on this line I think.
88. Pasta
89. Laughter
90. Jam jars
91. Wattle
92. Friends
93. Sunshine
94. Woodford
95. Quotes
96. Nectarines
97. Pretty things
98. Smiles
99. Fireworks
100. Life

Only one really big change, the other two are just changes to bring them up to 2013. There are a couple of other entries that I could have changed but it was a hard call.

H

 

 

A cut above the rest

I’ve been thinking about getting my hair cut for a while now and on Thursday night I finally had it done and I am so happy with it. After the cut she GHD curled it and it felt so classy and looked so good.

Shortness, 40/365

When it is straight it sits just touching my shoulders and I can still easily pull it back into a little pony tail or bun. I am also really happy that I think have found my hair dresser at last. I went to Gaia Hair at Sherwood which is just down the road and it is right beside Threads and More (though they were closed). I have hopped from hair dresser to hair dresser over the last few years never quite finding what I wanted. Thursday though, the salon was just I wanted 😀

Melbourne Cup

Fashions on the Field (by HelenPalsson)

If someone had told me a few months ago that I would have won Best Dressed at the work Melbourne Cup event I would have laughed. Somehow though I managed to pick up the prize. It wasn’t till sometime yesterday arvo that I decided to wear a hat for the happenings today. After SES, I stopped off at my parents and ummed and ahhed over the various hats. Then Matthew suggested I wear Karl’s WW1 Brodie Helmet, a little bit of fabric and a few ribbons later I had myself a hat which would protect my head from shrapnel and was classy enough for the “field”.

Amy Butler Brodie Helmet (by HelenPalsson)

Birthday Eve

I had a bit of flex time up my sleeve so I had a Birthday Eve day off (also because I was taking cake to work for my birthday and I wanted cake on my birthday not on the day before or after). I slept in till 7am!!! I did some washing, took care of the 1.8kg hunk of Pancetta I picked up last week, replied to some emails and then I headed off into the city. First off I collected my ticket for the Brandenburg concert and then I went to GOMA and checked out the Picasso exhibit at last (it closes on Sunday), that was everything I thought it was going to be and more. It was a really well presented exhibit. Getting a chance to see the works of Matisse, Cézanne, Rousseau, Renoir and all the other pieces that Picasso had collected presented alongside his own work was really good. At the GOMA shop I picked up one of the spilt pain teacup sets, it looks so good (I will take a photo of it later)

GOMA

Then I headed into the city and made a stop at Lush to buy my birthday present to myself and had a wander round the shops and I made the best discovery in Mountain Designs. Keen now makes/sells bags! Oh they had some cool bags. So cool!

After a bit more of a wander and a visit to Blue Cats for some chocolate goodies, I headed out of the city and home and then onto my parents home. On the way I stopped at the flower market and picked up some flowers.

Birthday Flowers Birthday Flowers

Pabbi cooked skonsur for dinner which was quite enjoyable, it has been sooo sooo long since I have had skonsur. I got to the kitchen table at dinner and there was a package waiting at my place. I was not expecting any presents at all as the deal is after you turn 21 you don’t get birthday presents any more. I opened the package after tea and it was pack of hankies 😀 Nice lady hankies. I had commented to Mum a couple of weeks ago that I hadn’t been able to find nice hankies. Now I have some 🙂 After that I cooked my birthday cake (pretty much this recipe, photo coming soon) for work today as the oven at their place is just a little bit better than the oven we have at the flat.

Then it was home time to watch The Hollowmen(man oh man I love that show) and then bed 😀 so I would be ready for a busy as usual day at work today 😀

Defence Charity Ball

Last Saturday night I got frocked up for a good cause, the third annual Defence Charity Ball in aid of Legacy and Red Kite and oh what a night it was. There was eleven of us from work plus the other assorted people that people knew from working in the Defence arena. The guys were looking swish in their mess kits and us girls were sparkling in our frocks. It was a night of good food, dancing, chatting, drinking and posing in Iroquois and with Military Working Dog Puppies and Jamie Durie. After the formalities of the ball were over, the rest of the table started on their way home but one of the other girls and I kept on going till the early morning, enjoying a night out all frocked up in our finest.

My dress picked me, I walked into a dress shop at Chermside, had a flick through a few racks, then the manager came over and said hello, asked me what I was looking for and pulled out a few dresses. The dress I wore, was the first one I tried on. I cam back a few days later with Mum, tried it on again and walked out with it 😀 The dress however meant that I had to wear heels. For those who know me, I don’t really wear heels, luckily I have a great flat mate who has the same size feet as me and wears heels 😀 I wore high heels every night round the flat with my track pants getting used to wearing high heels, I looked well like a picture but it was going to be the only way I would be able to last a night in heels. There were quite high heels too, a good 2cm high …. I have to give big thanks to Andrea and Brandi, my flatmate and one of her best mates for doing my hair and make-up. Which meant that one of the persons I work with (though he does work in one of regional offices didn’t recognise me). My hair was so cool, the curls managed to stay curly for a few days more which a lot more fun the the straight slightly wavy hair I have naturally.
The evening before the ball, Andrea and I met up in the city to find the brooch to wear on the dress sash, we went to sooo many shops and looked and discarded sooo many brooches (so many were just plain ugly). Then we came across this little costume jewellery shop in the Myer Centre and there she was, the brooch which was in my budget and had enough vintage style to be very me.

This ball was my first and definitely won’t be my last.

Red Dress and CurlsRed Dress and Curls

You can check out the rest of the photos here.

Cooloola w/e

Last Saturday morning, Mum and I packed up the car and headed north, first stop was the Eumundi Markets, which were interesting, I picked up a dress, a long dress as in down to my toes dress. I have always thought that long “maxi” dresses look weird and never tried one on. This one doesn’t look too bad at all. It also means I think that I have more dresses than I do jeans or shorts. If you had told a 17 year Helen that I don’t know what she would have said.

Back to the weekend though. After cruising the markets for a while we met up with Hilary, her daughter Erin and nephew Sam, or a Fairy and a Pirate as their painted faces suggested. Once we were done with the markets we headed north again to Gympie and the Tin Can Bay rd, which would lead us to our first destination of Seary’s Creek for lunch and a paddle.

Seary’s Creek by mum

Seary’s Creek. This is a most wonderful place. A decent creek flows out of a swamp and is just a nice creek – “they” have put in a lot of board walks etc to two swimming holes and you can float / swim from one hole to the other. On a body board, you just float down – very pleasant. Both pools have “tame” yabbies. The yabbies come and nibble / tickle toes if you stand still. We went both days and the first day there were kids catching and releasing them with a net. The second day Helen gave up trying to catch them with her hands as she wasn’t quick enough but managed to catch quite a few with a bowl. Sam was not successful, but he had a great time trying.

After we were all nice and cool we headed down a side road to explore and to see if the flying duck orchids that were in flower 6 weeks ago when Mum was up there last were still in flower and they were!!

Then we drove in to Poverty Point, which is a campsite at the southern end of Tin Can Bay. That was my first real experience driving through sand which I quite enjoyed. There were a few loooong stretches of deep sand that made me glad to have AWD on the car. We camped about 10m from the sand and our fire was just on the bank above the sand. Hilary and Mum both brought along a box of fire wood and Hilary had remembered to bring the marshmallows. Mum and I seem to always take the firewood and then forget about the marshmallows.

This is how Mum described the beach.

It has a lovely little sandy beach and when the tide goes out it is sand flats rather than the expected mud flats. There were these things washed up on the sand that looked like wafer thin dried apple slices – but most were only 3/4 circles – we realized that they were dried snail egg masses. Erin found a fresh one in the water, which is what we normally find washed up on the beach.

After Erin and Sam had gone to bed, Helen and I went walking on the sand flats in the low tide where we found all sorts of things; little soldier crabs having a feed and a wide array of shrimps, little fish, hermit crabs, snails and other crabs that were left behind in the sting ray feeding holes.

On Sunday morning, Sam and Erin had had breakfast and were in their swimmers by 6.00am!! It is a great beach for little people as when the tide is in it is a long way to deep water.

Once we had broken camp, we went for a short walk to look at the Orchids that Mum had found on her walk yesterday as well as just generally having a nice stroll in the bush. It smelt marvellous. It seemed to have a crisp apple aspect to it. Which is not at all what the bush normally smells like.

After we went on another walk/paddle in Cooloola Creek, we headed back to Seary’s Creek for lunch on the boardwalk, a swim, some yabbie catching and general fun.

Then it was time to start the drive home. We took the Cooloola Way home from Rainbow Beach which was a nice drive back to Gympie. We had a quick stop in Gympie so that I could have a looksie in the windows of a bank that my company has done a lot of work in. Driving home we stopped to have a look at a large colony of fruit bats just north of Nambour. There were 1000’s roosting in the trees beside the highway for a good 500m-1km.

In pictures instead of words there were…..

… plants
Light on IntegrifoliaFlying Duck OrchidCommon Fringed Lily20071104_06087Grevillea repensNative Lassiandra20071103_05922
Native LassiandraCryptostylis subulataMelaleuca shootswhite ball20071103_0591920071103_05912Drosera in flower

… a sunset
Sunset @ Poverty Point

… people
Mum at Eumundi MarketsErin at Seary CreekMum and Sam exploringExploring and playing with a car in the sandHilary & ErinMiss WrenPlaying with fire @ Poverty PointHelen @ Poverty PointHilary and Mum the Botantists

and there was my newish Crumpler bag that I love to bits (a Barney Rustle Blanket).
Barney Rustle Blanket @ Poverty Point