aquarium

Somewhere beyond the sea…

| poppypeach

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And into the SeaLife Aquarium, we went on Friday so the cousins could hang together and we could check out another tourist trap. The weather turned to rain and cold so we changed our zoo plans to an indoor activity and that was the aquarium. We enjoyed our time with the family wandering through the different areas and learning about sea creatures and a lot of them were Aussies so that was fascinating. I like to go to aquariums to learn about sea creatures and this little red fella is a fiddler crab and it derives its name from the fact that one of the male’s claws, called the fiddle, is larger than the other.

The octopus was showing off its tentacles as we wandered by and this was a Maori Octopus the largest octopod in Australasia and can exceed an arm-span of three metres and a mass of 10 kilograms. I still love octopus and my favorite is the Giant Pacific Octopus that I have seen at many aquariums on the Pacific North West. We found this groovy looking prawn and the kids enjoyed coloring in Finding Dory characters to watch them appear on the wall.

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We fell in love with this guy the Boyd Forest Dragon – this relative of the dinosaurs enjoys living on the tree trunks in the Daintree rainforest up in Far North Queensland. It is such a handsome little reptile and so photogenic too!

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All of these Australian sea creatures are close to my heart – the Giant Cuttlefish being an absolutely favorite animal. Cephalopod Love. The weedy seadragon and the leafy seadragon have been successfully bred in the aquarium as these beautiful creatures are near threatened so it is important to be made aware of them to preserve their natural habitats. And of course the green tree frog their numbers have been in decline for a very long time thanks to the Cane Toad – now that is a disaster of a story!

As we wandered into Antartica for the last exhibit we found the King Penguin and the Gentoo Penguin. There were so many penguins in the exhibit and I felt a bit sorry for them due to the small exhibit wth lots of animals. The Gentoo penguins conservation status are near threatened. They are an endless little ball of black and white energy swimming around in the tank and I absolutely loved watching them dive and swim.

Soon after we played tourist we wanted some food as the aquarium food was pretty crappy – would you like fried, fried or more fried food and the only vegetarian option was hot chips! Federation Square was close by and as there was a group of us, Chocolate Buddha is a great place to eat and the kids love Japanese – win win! We saw the Melbourne bikes and the boys were enjoying seeing themselves up on the big screen at the square. The architecture here is captivating and is art in itself it truly exemplifies Melbourne in this central location. The food at Chocolate Buddha has always been very good and is presented beautifully. I enjoyed the lunch tray with grilled salmon and it was such a treat!

Saturday the 23rd marked our 10th wedding anniversary – it was so perfect that we were in Melbourne to celebrate. I asked my sister in law if the kids could have a sleep over so we could go out and spend some time together. The kids couldn’t wait to go and we were looking forward to a night out so everyone was happy. I found a vegetarian restaurant in Rose Street, Fitzroy called Transformer. This was not just any vegetarian restaurant with veggie burgers and the like – this is a place where vegetables take centre stage and the dishes are all presented in a sophisticated way. It is not often we go out and enjoy a dinner where the food is so artfully presented, so a decade of marriage is the best opportunity! The flavours of the food were combined beautifully using sweet, sour, hot, umami to perfection. The menu is seasonal so it changes with the veggies available, so the flavours really shine. The cocktail flavors were super creative, for example in the Kawaii Five-O – Green Tea Ume, Mandarin and Lemongrass Sherbet, Matcha and Lemon – all right down my alley with the citrus and tea. The desserts were just delightful in their presentation and the flavor combinations of meringue and sweet fruit flavors like freeze dried mandarin were magical. Truly this was an absolute pleasure in food experiences for us.

After our dinner at Transformer, we took a walk down Brunswick Street to see what other restaurant highlights had popped up over the last 10 years. We saw Smith and Daughters a vegan restaurant which looks like something we hope we can try before we leave in a couple of weeks. To escape the chill of the night we ended our evening at the cinema seeing the film ‘Sing Street’ and enjoyed the flashback to the 1980s. For a couple of film aficionados, this was the best way to spend our anniversary.

Sunday we enjoyed a brunch with friends who 10 years ago were at our wedding reception – it was so wonderful to spend a relaxing time with everyone and enjoy delicious food and wine. In Melbourne, this is the place to celebrate good food and forever family and friends.

 

A piece a week – Some photography at the Cal Academy of Sciences for Missy’s (early) birthday celebration and an Infinity Scarf commission

| poppypeach
Over the weekend it was time to celebrate Missy’s 7th (early) birthday at the California Academy of Sciences. We have opted a couple of times instead of parties a friend can join one of our kids out for a fun experience. We are members of the Cal Academy so we can take a family as well as a little friend.
We spent the whole day at the Academy starting at the Planetarium with their new show Habitat Earth before lunch – which is a good idea as some of the fly overs in the animation make me giddy! Lunch is always good at the Academy though this time there is renovations that I forgotten about so it was Vegetarian burgers on the grill for me. The Rainforest was after lunch and that is always so hot but well worth it and we saw plenty of frogs, butterflies and birds. Down to the aquarium is my favorite and there is plenty to see with the fish feeding and the colorful tropical fish. The baby lion fish was the girls favorite. 
We finished our day with some hands on interaction at the naturalist center upstairs with an owl pellet for the kids to dissect and see what the owl had eaten for dinner!
Baby Lionfish – super cute with its parents
Checking out an exhibit
The birthday girl ready to go! 

A special pastry – since I have not made a cake yet!!

Hey Yellow bird!

Hello glass frog and it’s friends in the Bromeliad

Another cute frog
Loving the aquarium

Coconut octopus from the Philippines – on the run!!

And a friend from my Feldenkrais class loved my infinity scarf so much she wanted me to make one for her. I found this striped sweater fabric and lined it with stretch purple fabric and it is now ready to go to it’s new owner!

An upcycled sweater is now a scarf

A piece a week – A dress for a wedding in the Redwoods and my fave pics from the Seattle Vacay

| poppypeach
This week we went back to school after our 10 week summer vacation! I could not believe that the time flew by so fast and that the summer holidays were over so quickly. When school was out I thought – man this is going to be forever! As it turned out everything went well and the time flew by. We really enjoyed the time in Seattle with our friends and saw some very cool things so it leaves room for me to do a trip solo in the future to check out the art galleries and the Dale Chiluly glass exhibit near the Seattle Space Needle – I felt that I would like to spend time enjoying it rather than rush through it with the family.

This week with everyone back to routine left some time for me to ‘eat dessert first’ and that was to make a dress! I really need to get into production mode for the show in October but a friend gave me some fabric the other day and it was screaming to be made into something and I thought a perfect dress for a wedding, now I need to find some shoes 🙂 Everything went smoothly with the kids and their new classes and teachers and the best thing was going back on Monday and returning to our wonderful school community! Everyone had such a splendid summer and I think we were all ready to get back to routine, though somewhat slowly…

The dress I made this week – just needs some accessories and shoes (any excuse for new shoes!!)

 The fabric in the bottom of the dress is embroidered and that is the remnant of fabric my friend gave me and I found some black poly cotton fabric for the top of the dress from FabMo. The dress is a deep purple with shades of pink embroidery.

1st day for the 2014-15 school year!

Muppets of the sea shore

These anemone were an incredible colour at the Seattle Aquarium. We have only seen the green sea anemone here when we go tide pooling. The anemone reminded me of animal from The Muppets with his wild hair.

Lets ride that Orca!

 I love this picture for the kids expressions on their faces riding the tail of the wolf of the sea the Orca! The aquarium has this orca exhibit as the kids learning and play area.

My favourite animal – the sea otter 

This guy was just doing his thing in the water and I was so happy to have finally got an in focus shot of my favorite animal the sea otter. I even saw these guys in the wild when I was at Morro Bay in December.

Baby Cuttlefish

Well this may just be a super small cuttlefish rather than a baby but here is another cutie of the sea. I have seen these at the Melbourne Aquarium and they are about 10 times as big as this guy!

Neon Coral

Another stuffie for the collection

Frogs in the hot tub

At our friends place the kids were always looking for frogs in the hot tub. They just hung around the moist edge of the tub and were happy until the kids found them and played with them, carefully I must add!

Feel like some Cherry Pie

 We travelled to North Bend one afternoon to go for some cherry pie featured in a fave show from when I was younger – Twin Peaks. It was quite cool to be in there and try some pie! They had a wall of shots from the show and some interesting information about the cafe and the show. Just looking at the production stills took me back to the days when I watched it every week. Maybe I can find it at the local library to experience it all again!

Flying the rainbow flag on a house boat

 Our trip out to the Locks of Seattle and we saw a lot of beautiful house boats – make sure you do not go out the back door of this boat, you will land in the water! It is the best way to see Seattle from a boat and this tour was fascinating with the changes from the lake fresh water to the Puget Sound – an inlet of the Pacific Ocean.

Space Needle 

Look carefully and you will find Mt Rainer

Wonderful public art attacking the Space Needle!

In the gardens – Dahlia

Bees just loved these flowers

Buds and flower

The super moon was in Aquarius when we were in Seattle – this was a pic from my Skyview App on my phone

Wallabies saying what are we doing near this moss covered rock in the zoo??

 We spent a day at the zoo with friends of ours and enjoyed our last day in Seattle with some familiar critters from our part of the world. I loved hearing the kookaburras and seeing the budgies and the parrots.

Hello handsome Rosella – you look familiar!

Jaguar sleeping – doing what cats do best!

A stunning toucan – so amazing to see them in real life, rather than on a cereal packet

This porcupette was born on my birthday – there was a string fence around it so people would not touch it :/

The kids loved this monkey with the moustache and the elegant posture

With our friends having a good time!!

Some random pictures of the kiddos I really loved the lighting from the shade of the trees.

A tree climber – can you get down now??

Look closely and you will find the photographer
Enjoying being up in a willow tree

Day out to San Francisco and a trip to the Aquarium of the Bay

| poppypeach
As a silent auction prize from school we bought tickets to the Aquarium of the Bay at Pier 39. Honestly I am not a fan of Pier 39, there are too many people and not enough good places to eat. Anyway we decided to be tourists of a day and met some Aussie friends of ours at the Aquarium and decided to explore a little bit more away from the tourist traps at Pier 39. Of course the little ones loved the Aquarium, it is small but fits in a lot of information about taking care of the ocean and its creatures. The Giant Pacific Octopus came out and it was a wonderful site to see, the kids of course enjoyed the tropical fish and the starfish in the touch pool. The tunnel of rays and sharks is a lot of fun to wander through and they have an a new exhibit of river otters that we found had climbed a tree in their enclosure to watch the passers by.

My favorite creature of the Aquarium the Giant Pacific Octopus

As the aquarium excitement wore off and we had seen all the exhibits twice, we took a walk to the Musee Mecanique – The Mechanical Museum. Here you can take a bunch of quarters and play old arcade games like my favorite Galaxian and the like or even check out the dioramas from back in the day. A wonderful way to see what people enjoyed playing before everything went computerized. Be warned that Laughing Sal can be a bit freaky – she is huge, I had seen her before at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

Love the artwork on this game – an original stand up game!