My First Dictionary

have a look at this Blog :) My First Dictionary
As a school girl who loved putting words in sentences often to the point where they ended up as paragraphs...I love this! I always wanted a job as a sentence writer for school dictionaries :)

Aurora

Did anyone else read the Aurora series?
I remember reading and enjoying them when I was about 9 or 10! I think what first appealed to me was that Aurora and her family lived in a high rise apartment, something I found so much more exciting than living in a suburban family house! The other interesting feature of the Aurora series was that Aurora's Mother worked and her Father (who was studying ancient history) looked after Aurora and her little brother Socrates.
The books were written between 1966 and the early 70s and in Australia I would think this type of living arrangement would have been quite rare at that time. Not sure about Norway where the books were written, and set, but Aurora's apartment building seems to think it's odd too.
Anyway!!Id forgotten about these books until recently when I spotted an ex-library (and quite grotty) edition in a second hand shop. Hurrah!. Have read a couple of chapters and can still see why I loved Aurora as a child :)

Timmy, Toby and Teddy!

Ive found a couple of lovely vintage children's books at the Op Shop.
One, Tales of the Countryside has the most gorgeous illustrations.
Im in love with this picture from "Timmy, Toby and Teddy: The Three Gnomes"


These three lovely little chaps do good deeds throughtout their forest home but alas as the author tells us "The three little men had no one to look after them, No one to cook them nice dinners, or bake jam tarts. No one to kiss them goodnight and tuck them into bed warm and cosy"
Well as karma plays out, the little gnomes help out poor Honey Bee who has lost her wings! They take her home to Mushroom Cottage and with the help of a magician restore her beautiful wings..in return Honey Bee decides to look after her three new friends, doing everything from making them all new sets of clothes to making a new counterpane for their little bed! Heaven!

Lyric of the week!

Ive been listening to British band, Elbow over the last week or so, I really love their lyrics! Some of them are quite poetic..

One song I like is The Bones of You...it reminds me of how often Im taken to a different time, place and feeling when a song comes on the radio!

The Bones Of You - Elbow


So I'm there charging around with a juggernaut brow
Overdraft, speeches and deadlines to make
Cramming commitments like cats in a sack
Telephone burn and a purposeful gait

When out of a doorway
The tentacles stretch of a song that I know
And the world moves in slow-mo
Straight to my head like the first cigarette of the day

And it's you and it's me
And we're sleeping through the day
And I'm five years ago
And three thousand miles away

Do I have time? A man of my caliber stood in the street
Like a sleepwalking teenager I know
And I dealt with this years ago
I took a hammer to every memento

But image on image like beads on a rosary
Pulled through my head as the music takes hold
And the sickener hits, I can work till I break
But I love the bones of you that I will never escape

And it's you and it's me
And we're sleeping through the day
And I'm five years ago
And three thousand miles away

And I can't move my arm
For the fear that you will wake
And I'm five years ago
And three thousand miles away

And I'm five years ago
And three thousand miles away
And I'm five years ago
And three thousand miles away

Colouring & Mandalas

A book Id love to buy!



I love colouring! I could honestly say that its a form of meditation for me, it keeps me in the here and now and lets me feel like a child again (which is always nice!) Mandalas are wonderful to colour! You can give the same mandala to dozens of people and the different ways in which people go about colouring them is fascinating!
There are tons of great mandalas to print online and some good books to buy too...yay for adult colouring!!
My 40 yr old self is off to gather my pencils and paper...hurrah!


There are some nice pages to colour at the Printable coloring pages blog!

and you can watch someone else colour one at the cool 5min art site

Will it be a new me!

What a strange feeling...I feel alarmed, amazed and also a little excited about being the big 40! What will it mean? Will it be the magical entrance to a whole new world of self discovery! Please please let it be!!
I think I'll wear this badge with pride! :)

40

A toilet stop and a bit of Melbourne History

I have to admit to being a bit dismissive when it comes to our Australian heritage. After visiting the UK I was blown away at the history greeting you around every corner! Wherever you went there were castles, churches, abbeys...hundreds and hundreds of years old, Saxon, Celt, Roman, it was just everywhere!
When we returned to Melbourne I remember grumbling about how new everything was, nothing very interesting! Well yesterday when I least expected it I saw a glimpse of something that intrigued me. On the way back from a weekend in the beautiful and historic (I am now much more appreciative) Ballarat we had to stop along Hoddle st in inner Melbourne because Mr 4 yr old, Cam, had to go to the toilet right NOW!! We pulled into a little street to find a tree or a vacant block, anything...we ended up parking next to an old factory with a big clump of bushes nearby and Dad took Mr 4 to do his business. While that was all going on I happened to notice a funny little house on the other side of the street! It was made of very rough looking timber, unpainted and raw, the windows were covered by old wooden shutters and the roof looked to be made of iron with little flourishes of Asian inspired decoration around the gables. I turned the car around when the boys got back in and noticed a blue heritage sign on the gate reading "Singapore Cottage"
When I got home I decided to look up the great Internet and found that this little house would have been brought out here to Melbourne in pieces around 1855. It has markings on every plank and board so someone would know which bit went where and often these were in Chinese! The demand for housing was so strong after the gold rush that the government imported these houses from Singapore due to the lack of skilled builders and building materials available at the time.
This house is made from exotic Asian timber apparently. There are not many left now, but this one in Collingwood has been saved and heritage listed! I'm going to keep an eye out on any open days! Id love to look inside..something about people making these tiny places their home fascinates me! We are such a land of bigger is better when it comes to housing! as viewed by the miles of soulless Mc Mansions around...I find this little house warm and comforting (very impractical, I'm sure!) but lovely all the same!

Cosy = My Dad

When I think of the word cosy my Dad immediately springs to mind. Its not as if he was particularly cuddly or warm, he was 6ft and rather skinny most of his life. Its more the safe "cosy" I felt whenever we were together. Dad worked in an office and for as long as I can remember he carried musk lifesavers around in his suit jacket pocket. That lovely musk smell would greet me every time I hugged him around the waist, and so forever more that smell will make me smile, make me feel loved, happy and cosy. His lap was cosy too, his laugh big and expansive..I would sit and watch old British comedies tucked up on Dad's lap or scrunched in next to him as close as I could be! When I hug my boys now I just hope they feel that same amazing feeling of belonging that my Dad gave to me. When they curl up on a couch with their children I hope they'll remember the cosiness they felt as a child just as I do. Now that Dad's no longer alive, I really miss him but I hope wherever he is now he knows what a lovely legacy he left me! Hope he's cosy too :)

Read more Cosy stories here! Words and Pictures

argh! I want all of these

At Bride & Wolfe they have the most beautiful timber silhouettes! I just couldnt convince the lovely husband to part with that much money for something to hang on a wall! maybe one day, because I really am in love ;) There are such creative people out there!!