Spring Diary

We saw beautiful flowers starting to peep out today on our walk to the park. Which got me to thinking of upcoming Spring things to pop in the diary.

The Drummoyne Public School Fete is on Sunday 26th August this year. We had a ball last time, so we'll be going again this year. The Festival of the Winds down at Bondi flying kites. We've not been before and are going this year - Sunday 9th September from 11am to 4pm.

Biennale of Sydney: adventure #2

We visited the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) biennale offering today. We had a great time and enjoyed the works more than those we saw at the Museum of Contemporary Art a couple of weeks back. There is more installation, video and sculptural pieces at the AGNSW. Works we liked were large scale, recontextualised the everyday, and imbued a materiality and execution of intrigue. O really got into exploring the works, asking lots of questions.

Pictured is one of O's fave works. Small Business Karoke by Jun Shi, 2009. Reading the artwork info, we learnt that it's from the White Rabbit Gallery Collection too.

We drove into the City and parked at our fave little car park, Interpark Domain Car Park for a day flat rate of $10. Took a packed lunch for the boys and ate at the extra bench tables the AGNSW have placed alongside their cafe, recently. All good.

First colouring comp entry! Fingers and toes crossed.

Today we are posting off O's first entry into a colouring in competition. My Mum brings the Funday Telegraph section (from the Sunday Telegraph) over every week for O and it always has a picture to colour in (which I think its always part of a comp). O coloured this weeks in with great gusto and when I took a closer look it was because it was a Wiggles picture. So we've decided to post it in and enter the comp, in the hope we might be lucky enough to score a Wiggles prize pack!

Lots of Lego & White Rabbit Gallery

We always leave our visits to White Rabbit Gallery exhibitions to the last minute, today we went to see Down The Rabbit Hole (which ends tomorrow). I find the shows here consistently good and we always find new works which we love. White Rabbit Gallery showcases contemporary Chinese art, is privately owned and receives no public funding and entry is free. The gallery is easy to get to (in Chippendale) and it's a good size for the kids (not too big): 3 floors, all accessible by a lift. O loves exploring the art... This work of the pristine garbage truck's rear protruding from the wall was O's absolute fave today! We spoke about it at length, viewed it from above in the lift...scrutinised it's every detail, we did.

After the gallery we popped over to Sydney University to see the Lego Colosseum in the Nicholson Museum. We learnt that the Nicholson Museum has the largest collection of antiquities in the Southern Hemisphere, wow! Entry is also free. The Lego Colosseum was cool, but somehow I had visions that it was going to be larger. O loved it though; there was life outside the arena (stalls, people milling about) and then the amphitheatre... I had to soften some of my stories - some Lego bears and crocodiles were suggestive of gruesome colosseum goings on. Then we spent some time letting O run about Sydney University and its grounds.

"I ate the suns rays": a silly sunny breakfast.

Ferrys and fish 'n chips

It was a glorious Saturday yesterday and we made an early start for our ferry adventure. O had not been on a ferry - we've talked about it about, Grandma and Grandpa live on a ferry route and when a Play School episode last week featured a ferry ride - well, it was high time we hit the (harbour) high seas!


We did it the easy (er, lazy!) way - we drove to Circular Quay and parked at the Sydney Opera House. It's a flat rate of $15 a day on Saturday and Sunday. We caught the 10.40am ferry to Watson Bay stopping at a few stops along the way. O and Dad had great fun on the ferry - out the back, out the front, wind swept, 'waves', sailing boats passing by. Once at Watsons Bay, O had a great play along the beach, we had fish and chips for lunch and then caught the 12.49pm ferry back to Circular Quay. Flocks of people were arriving on incoming ferrys by the time we were leaving, and we were home by 2pm.


I had wanted to walk up the hill to The Gap, to look out across the sea - but I thought best not to push it and make the little folks over tired. Next time though. Another next time will have to be - go on Family Funday Sunday, for great public transport savings.

Paper Pom-Pom*

I had a request to find out how to make the paper pom-poms in the window display of the ribbon wholesaler, Pan Pacific Distributing. I called up Pan Pacific and the welcoming lady I had met there told me she had learned how to make them from a Martha Stewart video. The video is on YouTube, but I found the step by step guide more useful.

We had friends over today and winged it a bit in the making of these tissue paper pom-poms. I bought a few packets of tissue paper from the local newsagency. So the pom-poms you see pictured are flat on the back (they are each half a pom-pom) as we made them with only 5 sheets of tissue paper (not the 8 sheets required), however the paper dimensions are pretty much the same as Martha's.

You just concertina the paper, cut the ends rounded, tie in the middle with string/wool and then tease out the sheets - to create the volume of the pom-pom. The success of your pom-pom depends on the teasing out of the sheets. It's delicate work for the little ones to tease the paper out sheet by sheet, but if bits get ripped along the way it doesn't matter. We decided the pom-pom's make great party decorations, I am already thinking I'll do pom-pom party decor for J's first birthday this year (instead of balloons). In the meantime, the little ones 7 months and 4 months, liked the temporary pom-pom mobile I suspended above them.

* We've indefinitely abandoned our half made wool pom-pom.

18th Biennale of Sydney

Wow, I've just looked at the date of my last post and its been a month to the day - 22nd June - since I last blogged. We've all been so sick with a catalogue of illness this past month - I know lots of folks who have been caught in the feedback loop of colds - it seems to have been a more virulent winter this year.

Today we had our first taste of the 18th Biennale of Sydney. It's on at several locations (Cockatoo Island is always a fave, with a ferry trip to get there, the kids love the adventure), we ticked off the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). It's on Level 1 and 3. There are some works I really enjoyed and O had his faves too - like this one pictured. Although a darkened and brooding room - he loved the horse man and strange characters created... There are a few biennale family days too - though a friend went to one at Cockatoo Island and said it was extra super busy. I think we are going to skip the family days this year - probably better if your kids are bit older when they can endure queuing a bit more patiently! Oh, and the biennale is free.

It was also my first visit to the MCA since it's refurbishment. So we checked out the building as much as the biennale. I worked at the MCA for a short while (after art school) as a gallery attendent, and seeing the gallery refurb several months after it opened made me realise how local my life has really become. Well, this year anyway with new bub and toddler.

Ooh, and my little tip for mum's taking kids to the gallery... I took photos of the artwork title/descriptions (the works which I really liked) as I did not have time to read them in situ. I'll have a flick through them tonight when the kids are in bed having their own horse-man-head dreams.

Mash, sift, stir

I was not keen on going out into the cold windy day today - so suggested to O we bake some muffins. O loves cooking and eating, so my suggestion was well received. We made Annabel Karmel's carrot and pineapple muffins.We've made them lots - but never with the pineapple... I always substitute whatever fruit we have around. Today's muffin flavour: banana and raisins.

There is so much good fun to be had with muffin making: mashing, weighing, sifting, whisking, stirring, patty panning... We made large and mini muffins - the recipe below filled one large tray and one mini tray. I had wanted to pretty the muffins up a bit with some icing and sparkle, but with a six month old babe in arms who is teething and clingy this was not going to be possible. We had the muffins and we were happy with that!

We decided to have a teddy bear (muffin) picnic in O's bedroom. O set the picnic and we scoffed the muffins! To tell the truth, today's batch was not super tasty... I usually use six banana's but only had four...perhaps that was it?

What?

100g/4oz plain flour                        100g/4oz plain wholemeal flour
1 tsp baking powder                       ¾tsp bicarbonate of soda 
½ tsp ground cinnamon                  ½ tsp salt 
200ml/7fl oz vegetable oil               90g/3½oz caster sugar 
2 eggs                                          120g/4½oz finely grated carrots 

100g/4oz raisins                            225g/8oz tinned crushed pineapple, semi-drained 

How?

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Sift together the flours, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and salt and mix well. Beat the oil, sugar and eggs until well blended. Add the grated carrots, crushed pineapple and raisins. Gradually add the flour mixture, beating just enough to combine all the ingredients. Pour the batter into muffin trays lined with paper cases and bake for 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

A rapture of ribbons

A rainbow of ribbons. A wriggle of ribbons. A wrangle of ribbons. A rivet of ribbons. I wonder what the collective noun for ribbon is?

This morning Baby O and I made a trip to Pan Pacific Distributing, 162 Marrickville Road, on the corner of Meeks Road. The name is a little misleading - I saw this ribbon wonderland a few weeks ago and have been wanting to pop in. They are a ribbon wholesaler, recently located from their Leichhardt premises and now taking up residence in Marrickville. So they do big jobs supplying florists and corporates and the like, but they are very welcoming to craft nuts (like me) who happen to find their showroom.

They have sale tables and we scored; a forest green grosgrain ribbon and a lilac satin ribbon (20metres each roll and $2 each ex.gst) and then I indulged and bought an imperial purple satin ribbon for $6.50 (not on sale). They don't sell by the metre. So be prepared for reams of ribbon. Which I think is good, I use it for wrapping pressies, endless craft gigs... we have a high rate of ribbon usage in this household!

They sell ribbons in all shapes and sizes; double satin, grosgrain, polka dots, zebra print, from very thin to thick...and more! Next time I am in need of a race of ribbons I will definitely pop back!

Note: there are five hefty stairs at the front door to pull the pram up, however once inside the lady (who I think is one of the owners) was very accommodating and friendly, taking us through the back door when we left - avoiding the stairs.