Trip Downunder - Day 3

Today we managed to wake up early enough to make breakfast.. yesterday we slept right through it...

It was freezing today.. the weather is really miserable and cold and wet...

Marietjie fetched us bright and early and we spent the morning driving around and looking at the houses in the immediate area and the schools....

There are some nice areas and some really "tacky" ones.. the houses here are all very small (the bigger ones are VERY VERY expensive..) but then so are the small ones I suppose.. I hope we manage to find a nice house in a nice area... There were two areas we saw today that have lots of potential... Rowville and Wheelers Hill...

Came back to the Hotel and rested for the afternoon and I updated my blog.

Went back to Knox City and visited an awesome PUB shop that sells lots of memorablia,... they have a huge special on ACDC stuff... also found a CD / Electronics shop with tons of metal / rock / alternative stuff... Neville almost cried ... LOL.. they had so many brilliant box sets.. he wants them all...

Went to supper at Seamus O' Grady Irish Pub... was nice.

Trip downunder - Day 2

OK today we ended up sleeping right through the alarm.. Nev was meant to be collected at 9am.. we only woke up at 10h30 when the FireAlarm Drill was activated at the hotel.. LOL.. would still be sleeping if it didnt wake us up. Brett (the other director and Nev's new boss to be) collected him from the Hotel and took him to the Plant at Keysborough for the rest of the day. They had a meeting and Nev got to meet the people there.

I spent the day walking down to the local Shopping Mall and looking at the prices of stuff. Cannot make any sense of it at the moment.. some stuff seems so expensive and some is so cheap if you compare.

The money here is so funny... weird with a piece of plastic in it and the coins are shaped funny.. I have no idea how to use it.. LOL

Got to go out for supper with Dean and his wife Marietjie at HOGBREATH CAFE in KNOX centre.. Was very nice. The wine here is extremely pricey but there was a really nice one we tried.. might have to bring back a bottle.

One thing I have found here is that there are millions of Chinese people.. not one black face anywhere, but lots of asians.. very interesting as so similar to South Africa (the set up, shops, etc..) but so different as well.

Have to try and get used to the strange accent.. keep reminding myself that I am the one with the accent here now.. LOL

Trip Downunder - Day 1

OK bags are packed and ready by the front door.. the day has finally arrived and we are on our way to Australia to check it out...

Self snapshot while we are waiting for Jenny to come and fetch us and take us to the airport...

Got to the airport with lots of time to spare.. the queues were really small as we were so early and we booked in our luggage and made our way to the Premier Lounge for an hour or so while we waited for our flight... How awesome it is there.. felt so spoiled..
Made our way through to the Gate to get ready to take our flight... Making sure our tickets were ready ! Saw Hennie and Deone at the Gates too... they ended up sitting just in front of us on the plane..Check the size of our plane.. it is huge.. asked the lady and said it takes about 400 people... Wow.. it was massive inside too..
OK, now this photo is taken after 11 hours plus of flying... a VERY TIGHT squeeze in the seats.. you couldn't even eat without turning sideways.. but at least the flight was uneventful.. which is always a good thing I suppose... The girl next to us was an ogre though... Grr...

The staff on Qantas are really nice though and we generally got spoiled on the flight.. lots of food, snackies, gifts, etc.. so was a fun experience.. albeit SOOOOOOOOOOOOO long !!! Yawn.. couldn't sleep at all.. way too uncomfortable.. Most of the flight was in the dark and when it was light we had to keep shutters closed so the people could sleep... Nev and I walked the aisles at night to keep our circulation going.. was a huge plane so you could walk far.

The final stretch... I took a photo of my TV infront of me.. this was our final stretcjh.. 28 minutes and counting... Took long enough ! WOW !! We finally arrived at Sydney, (awesome airport, fly in over the harbor..) but it took so long to get our baggage that we missed our connecting flight to Melbourne. Luckily though we went straight through Customs.. There was one man whose bag was taken apart.. ouch ! felt sorry for him.. The just led Nev and Me right through.. yay..

We booked in for our second leg of the flight and had a quick drink.. only to realise that our clocks were set wrong (1 hour behind) and we almost missed our connecting flight.. they had to call us on the intercom and we were the last people on the flight.. was bad ! Felt terrible.. LOL

Anyhow.. that flight was luckily only 1h30 so by that time, it was old hat to fly... ! Arrived about 6pm on Sunday in Melbourne and picked up by Dean (one of the Directors).. such a nice guy.. Were taken to our Hotel (Punthill Hotel and Apartments).. Crashed after that ....

LETS SCRAP NSD #2

Managed to tackle another Challenge over at Let's Scrap.

NSD Challenge #2 was to create a layout, using a Let's Scrap sketch and using the word FIRST in the title.

This is the layout I created..


Over our December holiday we found a nice Putt Putt course on the beach. My son is mad about Putt Putt so we had to spend every moment we had playing Putt Putt.

Close up left and right:

Close ups:

Found some old Golf Bags that I had in my stash for ages... nice to be able to use them.

Used a tag for my journalling that I hid behind the photo.

Hugs, Mich

Mini Bags

At the Tim Holtz expo, we received cute little bags on the table with goodies in. A friend at work wanted to put something on the table (she is hosting a Mothers Day breakfast), so I suggested we make these little bags and put some sweets inside..

I took apart my other bag and cut out the template. I just used normal A4 template, stamped it with a nice black stamp that I had.

Luckily it didn't take too long to make:

Hugs, Mich

LETS SCRAP NSD #1

I am trying to do a few of the NSD challenges over at Lets Scrap before I leave for Oz. This is NSD challenge No. 1.

You had to use 2 photos and a scallop border PLUS a mixed title.

I pulled out my Fiskars punch and used these photos of my boys on holiday (who says you cannot scrap pink for boys).. We had a wet day and decided to look for a nice place to eat cake instead... so we found the best and most decadent cake in Jeffrey's Bay .. LOL


Close ups of the layout... I hand cut the cake freehand and used left over Kaiser paper that I had for the layout:

Also used some extra bling I had for my cake:

Had some really "sweet" rubons left over from the Expo last year that I finally managed to make use of...

Thanks for looking.

Hope to see you hop on over to Let's Scrap and join the challenges.

Hugs, Mich

LET'S SCRAP NSD MONTH OF CHALLENGES

NATIONAL SCRAPBOOK DAY @ LETS SCRAP 2011

Don't forget to hop on over to LETS SCRAP for a month FULL of challenges for you to partake in.

All the challenges run from 1 May to 30 May (except the 2 sketches), and you have a chance to win lots of prizes.

Hop on over and check out all the challenges !

Hope you see you there ... cannot wait to see what you girls all come up with !

Hugs, Mich