... and speaking of cute cubs, Joules, Kai's gorgeous! His hair looks so lovely and silky, and he has your eyes : ) I think you can expect the fans to start lining up before he's much older... *grin* (Sorry, I meant to comment days ago but I got caught up in everything else.)

The xmas tree generally goes up on December the 1st in our house, for no other reason really, than it's an easy date for me to remember. Otherwise I'd be saying all through the month - 'tch, really must get round to putting the tree up' but never doing it.
The cubs and I put the xmas tree up today after school - a couple of days past schedule. Had to dig the old plastic one out of the garage seeing as the cubs refused to wait for us to buy a new, living tree at the end of the week. I'm sure the lower branches of the tree are missing, I'm sure it was taller than that, but we have the top bit, and the trunk/base part, that's all we really need.
As soon as the tree was up the cubs decorated it.
Not really being creatures of the 'less is more' school of thought, they've smothered the thing in decorations - if it didn't have a metal frame it would be sagging beneath the weight. :)

Earlier this year I saw a xmas tree made out of purple tinsel! How cool is that?! I'm going to go back and see if I can find another one, keep it for next year when I might have a place of my own...

One of the cubs has been devising his own fast food restaurant. It's called McThomas and it's signature dish is a 'funnel-chuff meal'. As well as free sunscreen, you get toys with this meal - there's four to collect.
There's a Thomas, that has a button to push and he makes a chuffing sound and there's a wind up Percy who runs around in circles. The Toby toy makes bubbles, and Mavis whistles 'Humpty Dumpty' when you push her button.
*grin* If you're not familiar with Thomas the Tank Engine that probably didn't make a whole lot of sense.

*phew* 5 pages of the next AC chapter done, not before time.

And now for some more Holiday Blog...


Friday 15th November.

My sleep was a bit patchy, not surprisingly. For the past 2 (more?) years I've been sleeping on a mattress on the floor, at Caroline's I've got a real bed, with a base. I was 2 and a half feet off the ground. I got vertigo if I looked over the side...

It was a bit misty today, so no point in going to any of the look-outs, wouldn't have seen anything (though I still would have liked to go). So we trooped off to Katoomba instead to do some shopping and track down the house where an old friend of mum's used to live. (Found it, and the park that was named after the friend's father. Mum dutifully took pictures of it all for her.)
Katoomba's claim to fame is that it's the best place to view the Three Sisters rock formations. Consequently, it's a complete tourist trap, but it's really not a very pretty place though as tourist traps go it's quite cheap. To me it felt a lot like Taralgon, in Victoria, only hilly. (note: Taralgon has been described as a 'shallow end of the gene pool' town. Very country, very local. No offense to anyone living there of course.)
Got some postcards and some food and a really cute pair of pink/white hair ties (that will be used on a future project, details to follow as they become available) and generally puttered around until we went home for lunch. Was very tired in the afternoon so I crashed out for a few hours, waking up just in time for dinner. Fancy that. And I didn't have to cook it. :)
Rang the cubs after dinner to be told how much I was missed *sooky smile* one of them even hugged the phone cos he couldn't hug me...

Saturday 16th November.

First stop today was a clothing factory in Katoomba that was having a garage sale. Mum and Caroline - who are both well into handcrafts, especially patchwork, gleefully descended on the mountains of material, gathering up great armfuls of the stuff. I was a little bit more restrained; I got 2 metres of a lovely sage green cotton (not sure what I'll do with that yet), a small piece of bright blue and red tartan (which I do know what I'm going to do with - it's related to the hair ties) and a lot of pale green silk cord (33 metres as it turned out) which I was very happy to get cos I haven't been able to find anything close in Melbourne, and I need it for one, very specific purpose.
Then we went to Leura which is a very pretty, well-maintained little town. Leura styles itself the 'heart of the Blue Mountains' and it's an up-market tourist trap with prices to match. Every second shoppe sold antiques or 'Country Crafts' *rolls eyes*. We visited the patchwork place there - what a surprise - 'Picklemouse Cottage'. I bought a tiny piece of purple pansy material because it was soooo prety. 'Picklemouse Cottage' didn't just have patchwork supplies though, it had lots of other stuff - pretty, shiny stuff and I was a: very glad I didn't have a credit card, and b: very glad that lay-by wasn't really practical for me.
All of the shops in Leura had xmas decorations for sale and we went in and had a look through a couple of stores. Loads of things, some very clever, some pretty cheesy - it got to the stage where I was going to take a cricket bat to the next singing, jiggling Santa I saw as well as breaking the fingers of the person who activated it. Why does all the singing xmas crap have American accents, by the way?
In one shop I saw a decoration made out of large neko bells, wired together to look like bunches of grapes! Cool! And guess what, I've just bought a whole pile of purple neko bells that I was wondering what to do with!
Didn't buy any xmas decorations but I did get a little trinket box shaped like a bunch of grapes. I like grapes.
Crashed out again that afternoon before dinner, just so tired.

A quick word about my back-pack...

... which is purple, as you know, and amongst other things, has 2 of the purple neko bells and a 'baaing' sheep called Winston (thank you, Carol!) dangling from the front of it.
I cannot sneak anywhere while I'm wearing the pack; the bells bounce around, jingling madly, and Winston 'baas' as he's bounced against the bag. I was getting some very strange looks from people, wondering what the noise was and where the heck was it coming from? :)

... to be continued...