coffee

Spring Breaking

| poppypeach

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We all had a lovely spring break the kids and I. It all started with completing my paper for Uni, and once that was done I had a bit of a breather with hanging out with the kids. Monday I drove them to the farm to do the chicken chores. It was such a beautiful day to be hanging with the chickens, they loved the outside sunshine and snacks with the humans. This Buff Orphington chook is one big lady, she is all feathers and such a sweetie! You can see Snowflake the white chicken on the ground, she was adopted by one of the kids in the 4H chicken project as someone left her at the farm?! She is another lovely lady. While we were hanging with the kids and the chickens in the spring sunshine, we even had our friends from San Jose visit and drop off my son after a sleepover.

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After an intense study period, I like to craft and as I had not switched out my entryway decorations since the last holiday I wanted to bring in something fun to my new garden bell addition. I made pom poms after I found this cool neon yarn and I added it to an embroidery hoop without its buddy so here is the undersea background for the whale. I am now crocheting a blanket which is a lot of fun as I have not crocheted in ages. It all started with a granny square YouTube video when I was kicked out of the lounge room as Missy was playing the Switch and watching Netflix (a cooking show!) with her friends for a girls sleepover.

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Thursday I went in search of a mysterious flat white coffee as an Aussie friend of mine told me about a place downtown Mountain View that had decent coffee. You see, I stopped drinking coffee 12 years ago when I moved here as the only well-made coffee I could find was at Dana Street Cafe (an Aussie barista made a kick-ass flat white). It was inconsistent as she was not always working plus I was not hanging out at the coffee shop with a baby. So after a while, it was no more coffee for me which turned out to be a good thing as I became a kombucha fan down the track…. but that is another story! Anyway, this coffee shop downtown is called 1oz coffee, and it was a super cool cafe to hang out sans the nerds! Actually, there is one in the background! Well, it seems to me that this is a place to come and drink coffee and snack out with friends (delicious pastries from Alexanders down the road, plus Rx date bars and big cookies) rather than sit on your machine all day with that one cup of coffee.

After the coffee (see the super cute flat white) I took the kids to look at the caterpillars outside the Mountain View Library. These caterpillars were everywhere, they will one day become the Tussock Moth when they transform. They were all over the sculptures outside the library, and the kids really enjoyed finding them in bunches all going somewhere? The library is always the best place to hang out over break even though there is a remodel happening and the kid’s book selection is minimal. The kids will still come out with a bag full of books especially when they have been banned from the computer for the break! It worked out well as we would have family game time playing Mario Cart and the kids could track my progress and give me high 5s whenever I was in the top 10 – yay!

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The bonus of being off all week was that pretty much every day we would go to the park and hang out with our neighbours! The kids would climb the trees and look for critters and even bring them home to live in a shoebox. The adults would knit on the blanket and drink wine, not long till summer and we can do that all the time!!

I also had the opportunity to deep clean my house to get rid of 3 boxes of books, clean out the kitchen and kids room to sell at the upcoming citywide garage (yard) sale on the 5th May weekend. And after that it will be time to donate everything, it will feel so good to get rid of stuff though we still need to move some more stuff if we have another year or so it is hard for me to donate all the yarn! I did give a local maker space lots of craft materials, and that felt good. Most of my little yarn balls are going to my big granny square blanket that will tell the story of the many pieces I made in the time I have been knitting which is around 12 years that is since I was pregnant with Ash, man time flies when you are having fun!

Ch-Ch-Changes

| poppypeach

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Visiting the beautiful City of Melbourne is always a joy with all the memories that come to mind discovering new places to visit with the kids. When I lived in Melbourne over 10 years ago I enjoyed a lot of ‘growing up and finding myself’ time here! Everything from finding my love of art, discovering my calling as a designer, huge nights out partying, broken hearts, love affairs, living alone, living broke week to week as a student, riding and owning a bike, living in share accommodation with strangers, freelancing jobs in many offices in the city and surrounds, enjoying eating and cooking food and finding the love of my life has all been a part of my life patchwork here in Melbourne.

This panorama is up on top of a hill at the Royal Park Nature Play Playground in Parkville just behind a place where I used to take my little blue bike and ride the oval round and round to get some exercise in the city away from the traffic and up behind the native trees. Everywhere I go I am telling the kids this is where I rode my bike or that is where I lived. There were many good times back in the day in this amazing city!

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Looking down into the city from the top of the hill and how the landscape has changed dramatically with lots of high rise apartment blocks. I don’t think living in an apartment block will be that appealing to a modern family these days. A lot of the 1 BR and 1 Bath apartments sit empty with a price tag of $450,000 plus attracting many an overseas investor looking to plant some cash somewhere.

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Still the architecture of some of the buildings are a sight to behold with so many details. The building on the right is a building belonging to the RMIT Design Hub with an outer skin of disks of glass on the exterior of the building. This fascinating except is from the Sean Godsell architect website: In particular the outer skin of the Hub incorporates automated sunshading that includes photovoltaic cells, evaporative cooling and fresh air intakes that improve the internal air quality and reduce running costs. The cells have been designed so that they can be easily replaced as research into solar energy results in improved technology and part of the northern façade is actually dedicated to ongoing research into solar cells to be conducted jointly by industry and RMIT. The entire building façade, in other words, has the capacity to be upgraded as solar technology evolves and may one day generate enough electricity to run the whole building.

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Down the road from our place we found a wall of cats belonging to Cat Boarding Melbourne and who can resist a lucky cat and Missy wearing her fave cat dress.

Finally I had my first sit down coffee in a Melbourne coffee shop at Heartattack and Vine in Lygon Street, Carlton. We made a visit to my friend at Readings to get some book recommendations of local authors and kids chapter books. Mr Ash now loves any book by David Walliams and is trying to collect as many books as he can before we leave Australia. Each of the books he read in one day and so far he has collected Gangsta Granny and Awful Auntie . He compares the writing of David Walliams to another of one of his fave authors Roald Dahl.

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As the day seemed too good to go back home and stay indoors we ventured out to the Royal Park Nature Play Playground in Parkville as I had heard from my sister in law that it was named the nation’s best playground by landscape architects. The design of the play structures are fantastic in their design, as you see chunky tightropes with rope to hang on up above the top of a crows nest which leads to a gigantic spider web. The kids really enjoyed navigating the space up high. Even I enjoyed climbing over the huge log sculpture and climbing in the nets – great exercise in balance and body strength. Lucky my yoga planks and chaturanga help me lift myself up onto the logs, it’s a great workout!

The kids enjoyed watching the videos of  themselves jump off the structure – you can see how much fun they had at this playground. As we left there were screams of can we go back with Daddy soon?!

25 days of post #4 A lovely coffee morning

| poppypeach
Today was a lovely morning for a get together of a bunch of ladies who usually exercise together 3 times per week. It was great to see everyone all dressed up & out of their sweats. Getting dressed up & taking my new boots out was a lot of fun & I enjoyed wearing a hello my name is… Sticker on my dress!