holidays * part two

Part two of our annual holiday roadtrip entails camping on the Central Coast.

Our camping days started way back on my husband's bucks weekend (17 years ago). Mr Flowerpress' brother in laws and friends took him camping at the National Park campsite down the hill from his parents' house.

Mr F is the youngest of four kids, and a few months later all four siblings and their families came together to camp at this park situated on the most beautiful beach. Some of us were kid free in those days!

From there it quickly became an annual tradition, and every year since then we have camped together.

It gives our families who live in different parts of the state a chance to come together and time to catch up on all that's happening in our lives. Mixed in are friend's families who came to camp one year and just kept coming back.

We swim together, we cook together, we walk together, we laugh together and we live together.

There's no housework, no school, no work, no tv. There are waves and stars and bush turkeys and trees.

Some years it rains, some years its hot. Last year they shut the park to daytrippers when it hit 46 degrees. Another year we celebrated Miss A's birthday under a flooded tarp after a week of solid rain. A small tent collapsed under the weight of the deluge while we were singing Happy Birthday. You have to laugh!

One year I camped while six months pregnant with twins and well, this year those twins are going into high school.

I think it really hit us this year how long we've continued this tradition. We understood again how blessed we are for this special escape and company. And we celebrated that the big kids with lives of their own are still coming back to camp and still dreaming of this magic place.

I really hope I'm camping in another 17 years.

p.s. yes that is beer on tap, peroni actually, courtesy of an a b-i-l who was a publican for a while. And pps, pretty beach is on the bay, but still quite a pretty beach!

holidays * part one

I'm back and ready for the New Year!
I thought I'd share some of the hghlights from the last few weeks of holidays, it was lots of fun and so great to see both our families and spend time with them, a luxury we rarely get during the year as most of them live so far away.

The first leg was visiting my family up north for a fortnight. As usual we had lots of laughs, lots of great food, lunchtime beers, a great christmas and fun night out for new year.

I loved the early morning walks and swims on the beach and if you saw a raggle taggle bunch doing Salute to the Sun on the sand one morning with two dogs joining in, that was us. It wasn't pretty!

How are you all? So nice to keep up with some of you over the holidays on Instagram and share the cold drinks and hot sand. I really hope its cooler now poor Perth, Melbourne and Adelaidites. That hot weather looked pretty miserable.

Part two of the holidays tomorrow and then I've got a couple of simple tutorials I've photographed since I got back. See you then!

photos from above
* early morning walk and swim at Byron Bay dog beach...
* followed by coffee and very crispy bacon and egg muffins from Fish Heads
* my traditional xmas day pavlova (based on donna hay's recipe) - gone in sixty seconds
* the kids snowflake patterns saved from last year
* a love of flowers and art, inherited from mum and dad
* The Hombres at Bangalow pub for New Year's Eve, so good!
* big skies and time to watch them, heaven
* christmas doberman takes a nap
* not a moment to lose, a motto to live by

2013

And there goes 2013, just like that!

Actually mentally I'm still in 2013, and will be for a while. I'm still on holidays and have some lovely family camping in my future, hooray. 2014 can cool its heels a moment while I recharge.

An annual tradition round here is this end of year post when I go through my Flickr pages and compile a mosaic or two of my creative life for the year. {and if you're interested here's 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008}

Its always a nice surprise to see how busy and productive I've been despite sometimes feeling like I'm getting nowhere and taking too long about it!!

This year is no exception. It was big! Some great important things happened this year and I learnt a lot.

My work was featured in The Sydney Morning Herald's Spectrum Design section.

I taught my first craft workshops at SewMakeCreate.

I did a ceramics course and learnt to throw pots. A new addiction this and I'm already signed up for more in 2014.

I learnt to Shibori, expose my own screens and make coiled brooches at workshops run by other people. It was fun! I tried embroidery. Here's to more learning this year too.

I cooked and ate a lot. A brief flirtation with the 5:2 diet and an increasing dislike for processed food saw me make my own pickles, jam, marmalade, yoghurt, ricotta, paneer, bread, soup, curries, pastries, pizza, dolmades, soap and lots of cake. I also grew more of my own produce, which made me very happy.

I printed lots of fabric. So much that I didn't get round to showing it all on the blog. That's something to remedy in 2014, and sewing more with my flowerpress fabrics is another.

I sewed some more clothes for me, and I thought and read a lot about learning to adapt patterns to my particular shape. That's another thing I want to pursue further this year.

I dithered in my bloggings and was quiet for some of the year. I can see from the comparative number of posts that I wasn't as present here. However, the absence made me realise blogging's importance in my life. I hope to embrace it anew. This year I hope to be a more focussed and committed blogger. Another thing I really enjoyed this year was getting out and meeting more bloggers in person, both friends I've met through the blog and via ABCD meetups and the Voices 2013 competition. Bloggers are such lovely people and its nice to have a chance to catch up on all that stuff that you never talk get a chance to talk about in emails.

Do you have plans for 2014, I need a few more ideas for the year, and I'd love it if you wanted to share yours here. And Happy New Year!!!  Here's to 2014, but not just yet ;-)