Let the Games Begin!! Homegrown Olympic village.
Like so many people I cannot wait for the Games to begin.
It seems like only four years ago I was there, brandishing my valued infinity pass which allowed me access to…well everywhere.
In the Birdcage mid-track 
aka Usain Bolt (see pic), courtside at the US Dreamteam versus Boomers game, Federerside at the tennis, poolside at the Phelps eight medal haul, podiumside at the cycling…ahhh the glory days.
But in the theme of inspirational sporting quotes such as :
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”
Pierre de Coubertin (founder of modern Olympic Games)
… it’s not really that far removed from my own amazing Olympic village at home…the competitors all take part and they all fight!.
Want to test your self-esteem? Go to a model casting.
This week I visited the Land of the Giants.
These giants though, weren’t green and gnarly and built like rectangles.
No! They were mostly blonde or brunette and smooth and built like pencils.
KINGY…The beach is back!
International tourists may never have heard of it.
Many in Australia would hazard a guess it’s in the UK, based on its royal reference, but for a fortunate number of those-in the-know, Kingscliff or “Kingy” is an irresistible lure to an immediate slow down and an astonishing strip of coastal beauty on the east coast.
For a while now its shine has been on hold, with glimpses of it’s former glory poking through ravaged pandanus trees and some scaffolded shoreline.
Mother nature, in her cycle of teaching us to appreciate our environment, lashed the Kingy coastline, stripping away sand, eroding vegetation and leaving a glum tarnish to this otherwise pristine patch of coastline.
Her mood didn’t last too long thankfully and in an upbeat change of heart the beautiful beach is back.
So, as our aussie autumn sun beats down with temperatures more akin to summer, it’s time to return or if you’ve never been there, consider Kingscliff for a visit.
Photo from Jo E
How to host a party when your husband has a say.
How do you go from having a reasonable 30 people party, ( including kids) on a public holiday to celebrate a non-milestone birthday and a significant national event, to a cram-them-in-until-you-can’t-see of 80 or so (with some opting to leave their kids at home for fear of them being crushed) but who’s counting, event??
Easy!
You let your husband have some say.
Fashionable new position for the stepmum.
I am excited to announce I have a new job!
Meet the new PR Manager for the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival Brisbane, a fantastic showcasing of emerging, local, state, national and international design talent.
I am thrilled to have a fabulous, new venture to focus on for a few months, and it means for me that I can legitimately grab more take-aways for dinner and insist that my husband has a crack at the grocery shopping again.
For the kids, they’ll think that it means their indiscretions, such as not ironing their school uniforms or spending more time on Facebook, will fly under the radar.
Regardless of how many pocket-money deductions there may or may not be, or whether Indian or Thai curries will rule, it’s going to be an even busier few months and that doesn’t unnerve me.
Not at all, I love working and I thrive on being busy, but…
There is just one small, niggling hesitation.
100 and a half..Goodbye Grandma x
My father was sorting through his mother’s papers last week after she passed away and found a newspaper article from decades ago, titled, “The high cost of Funerals”.
Grandma had circled a number of points that she wished to be enacted for her funeral one day.
No eulogy, no silly poems, no soppy music, no speeches and for the coffin to be closed and to make sure it was ‘nailed down tight’.
Like kids sneaking out after dark, my dad, his brother and sister had the wicked joy of ignoring their mum and doing the complete opposite but this time without fear of retribution. After all the nails were in pretty tightly.
At the funeral, except for the shut coffin, there were touching speeches, four eulogies, a DVD slide show of her life set to music from her teens, some tears and plenty of hilarious recounts of her life.
She would have been cranky but secretly would have loved it.
Doris Maud Donovan was born in 1911 and lived for exactly 100.5 years.
A pretty remarkable milestone, considering for 100 of those years she was in fine health and had all her faculties. But a bad fall and a break, triggered the end of a full life.
She never drove a car…
The great kid clothing rule!
My fabulously opinionated, often indignant and perhaps slightly delusional, second eldest daughter, just walked into my bedroom…Angry! Furious!
She was steaming having discovered that her sister, the next one down and almost three years younger, had stolen three, (not one , no, not two, but) THREE! of her shirts.
In her words, her sister ‘bleeps me to tears”.
Despite the lack of tears, she expressed her fury at this clothing indiscretion, as she wore a pair of orange, skinny jeans that belonged to the said thief sister.
And she had in fact made the unbelievably outrageous discovery as she herself was rifling through the bandit’s wardrobe to try and ‘just” borrow some of her clothes.
Kids talk!…the new french.
Je suis repeter des lecons de francais pour la troisieme fois.
For those, who can’t read french, I want you to know, I am excellent at it.
For those who can, ne le dites anybody je ne peux pas.
To translate; I am repeating french lessons for the third time.
Not because I am a slow language learner..Non, non, non!
It’s because I am dedicated to perfecting it.
It’s the same mindset I have applied to mastering the many other languages that I have experienced in my home.
My french classroom!
TITS on the Track (Milford)
It’s almost embarrassing, that the stand-out, remarkable memory of hiking one of the world’s most famous and spectacularly scenic hiking tracks is, collectively, strapping tape, shoelaces and a rubber band.
That’s not to say it’s my favourite moment, rather the one that instantly flicks to mind when I’m asked to recount the four day trek.
If only our clothes could talk!
The Secret Lives of Dresses!
by Erin McKean.
This is simply a glamourous read, with all the charm, simple sophistication and class of a vintage or retro dress.
Dresses, which collectively become a character in this book and tell the stories of their owners, with wistful or vibrant, melancholy or joyous emotion.
A range of feelings that Dora traverses as she comes to terms with love and loss and friendship and family.
Karryn Wheelans 