Here is my choice for this week’s Scenic Sunday – a photo from the Chinese Garden of Friendship, Darling Harbour, Sydney, Australia.
Category: Sydney
Great weekend & A bit of stitching for a change
I’ve been offline most of the week thanks to feeling really crappy again during the week – this week, though, I’m making an appointment for a CT Scan for my sinuses and having some allergy tests done, so fingers crossed we can finally work out why this stupid sinus infection is hanging around for so many months and making me feel like death warmed up!
Last weekend, though, was a lovely treat for the month – I went to the Hunter Valley in NSW with Alison, Amanda and Sue for a stitching weekend away. Amanda kindly came and picked me up on Friday afternoon and chauffeured me – it was a lovely change for me, as I’m always the one driving. We arrived at about 7pm and walked into ‘our’ house to be greeted with a roaring log fire and dinner being prepped by Alison and Sue – the weekend was starting out on a blissful note already! The rest of the weekend didn’t disappoint either, it was a fantastic weekend away where we managed to combine some stitching (yes, we actually did do some), chatting, shopping, wining and dining, and I even made my very first scissor fob sale … to a lady vintner at one of my favourite vineyards up there (her white port is to die for in my opinion!). All-in-all it was a really awesome weekend, and hopefully we can make this an annual event, ‘cos I’m signing up for next year already!! Here’s a photo of our accommodation and home for the weekend, along with my fantastic company for the weekend 😀
The week before the retreat I managed to finish a little ornie stiching, and got the following ornie finished – it was supposed to be for the Yahoo group CYOO challenge, but I got a bit cranky during the month and couldn’t be bothered posting a photo on the board (and for once didn’t even bother doing the JCS monthly challenge one). I still hope to stitch an ornie a month, I just probably won’t be posting it on the board.
“Joy, Love, Peace” by JBW Designs
stitched on 32ct natural Belfast linen
with WDW Garnet and GAST Dried Thyme
During the weekend retreat I managed to put a reasonable amount of stitching into Prairie Schooler’s 2005 Limited Edition Santa, and during this weekend I’ve been able to put the final stitches into it after having a marathon stitching session on Saturday. The only thing I changed is to leave out the “2005” which is stitched in Black Coffee Crescent Colours below each side of the green letter blocks, and added a couple of random snowflakes instead.
“Here Comes Santa Claus 2005” by The Prairie Schooler
stitched on 28ct natural Cashel linen
with kit Crescent Colours threads
I love how the snowflakes lift off of the fabric – hard to see in the photo
Now I’m off to try to create my soon-to-be Etsy store, as I’ve also got a whole heap of scissor fobs to load up into the store. I had another beading session yesterday while Katie and I watched Supernatural Season 4 on DVD (that was after we had a few hours out at Miranda shopping centre where we saw the latest Harry Potter movie). I’ll do a separate post of the latest ones that I created yesterday, plus a couple of close-ups of my latest favourites …
Photo Hunt – Rock(s)
PhotoHunt
Why does this perfect day have to end?
What a way to spend a Sunday … this evening I managed to put the final stitches into part 3 of our Ackworth Friendship Book which is being stitched as a round robin, which means I’ve now halfway through stitching on Nicki’s piece.
That in itself is a good achievement at the end of the day, but certainly not what all the excitement is about … Oh no, no, no, it was FAR more exciting than that!!! No, today was the day that I spent in the company of Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki and Misha Collins at the Supernatural Convention … and THAT is the reason I wish it didn’t have to end!!! I’m still feeling a bit shell-shocked after the whole experience – in a good way! 😀
I’ve got oodles of photos, but thought I’d share the experience with you with a select few … well, OK, about a dozen!! 😛
First of all, it was worth going just to get to watch about 5 of the upcoming episodes of Supernatural that haven’t been aired in Australia yet – how awesome to see them up on the huge big theatre screen above the stage!! Apologies for most of these photos – they were taken in bad lighting from halfway back in the auditorium (although the photo of the big screen below came out suprisingly well!).
Then we had chance to ask questions of Misha Collins for an hour – what a superb and fun speaker he is, and a great addition to the show.
Afterwards it was time to start getting called for autograph sessions, and I took along my favourite computer wallpaper that I printed off at home, for Jensen Ackles to sign. After just signing stock standard publicity photos he was apparently really impressed with my photo choice as he hadn’t seen it before, and had to pass it around to his offsiders before signing it … gave a great chance to have a quick chat with him {{insert heavy sigh of dreamy pleasure here}}.
After queueing up for an hour in the lunch queue, it was time to head back to the Auditorium where we signed up to buy a copy of the DVD covering the weekend’s events, and had chance to catch one final new episode of Supernatural before we were graced with the presence of Jared Padalecki … this was Katie’s chance to drool heavily, as Jared is her supreme favourite.
Next up came my chance to drool and slobber, and I’m sure the reason I felt dehydrated coming home had nothing to do with the fact we hadn’t had a drink all day, but rather that I was sat with my mouth gaping open in awe at seeing Jensen Ackles in the flesh on stage! {{insert another heavy sigh of dreamy delight}} Yes, I know, I’m like a love-sick teenager, but I just can’t help myself 😉
Jared and Jensen spoke individually on stage for 1/2 hour each, then we had the pleasure of having the two of them back on stage together, while Jared acted like a child with ADD and the two of them stuffed themselves with Fantales candies. They did manage to field a few more questions from the audience inbetween clowning around and taking cracks at each other.
The day finished with Misha Collins coming to join them on stage, and Jared and Jensen drew on T-shirts to auction off for charity … at $3,000 a pop I’d say the auction was a huge success, and the Starlight Foundation will be thrilled with the proceeds.
So, what can I say, aside from “WOW, what an awesome day!!!” – a perfect finish to my fortnight of annual leave … and I’ll definitely be having fun memories for years to come. Now all we need now is for Channel Ten to pull their fingers out of their proverbial behinds and get Episode 9 onwards onto Australian TV – Misha Collins couldn’t believe we were only up to episode 8, to which he got a thunderous response in agreement from the audience … so, come on Channel Ten, come to the party!!!
Photo Hunt – Triangle
This week’s theme is ”Triangle” and I struggled to find a photo choice before I headed off on leave (this is post-dated again, I love WordPress for that function!) … so I decided to use some famous triangles on the Sydney harbour landscape – a closer look at the Sydney Opera House.
Photo Hunt – Bridge(s)
This week’s theme is “Bridge(s)” and while I’m living in a city with one of the world’s most beautiful and well-known bridges, I decided to stick with the obvious – here’s Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, as viewed from a ferry coming into the harbour … you can see the Sydney Opera House in the bottom corner too 🙂
Night out under the stars
What an awesome night out … after my Chiro session tonight we headed into the city of Sydney, and plonked ourselves down in our seat near Mrs Macquaries Chair, at the Open Air Cinema. What an exquisite setting it’s in … the huge movie screen sits out over the water in the harbour, with the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge sitting proudly and magnificently in the background, with the occasional bat flying overhead. Here’s a photo of the setting from their website – just awesome!
And to top it all off we saw the BEST film – “In Bruges“. A lot of people probably wouldn’t enjoy it (including my Mum) as it includes lots of profanity … and the humour is quite dark … but Colin Farrell was an absolute treat to watch, and we all laughed our heads off at the shocking quips and humour – highly, highly amusing! And I’ve always been a bit of a fan of Brendan Gleeson, so it was a double treat for me! The movie was much better than I was expecting, and I’ll be sure to add it to my DVD collection once it’s been released 😀
Here’s one of the earlier parts in the movie that yanked my chain … and one of the few parts with no swearing! 😉
Ken (Brendan Gleeson): Coming up?
Ray (Colin Farrell): What’s up there?
Ken: The view.
Ray: The view of what? The view of down here? I can see that down here.
Ken: Ray, you are about the worst tourist in the whole world.
Ray: Ken, I grew up in Dublin. I love Dublin. If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn’t, so it doesn’t.
Sick humour, most definitely (it gets much worse) … but awesome viewing on the big screen! One of Colin Farrell’s best performances in my eyes …
Happy New Year !!!
Just dropping by to wish everyone a Happy New Year. Hopefully you all had fun seeing in the New Year in whatever you chose to do so. Personally I joined the squillions of thousands of party-goers crammed along the harbourside in Sydney to witness the most spectacular fireworks display I’ve ever seen! It was a nightmare for me getting there, thanks to over-full and late trains causing me to miss my last ferry to Balmain, but a bus trip and short taxi ride later and I was joining my party group in time to play “celebrity heads” (which was a total hoot!), have a few drinks (OK, perhaps more than a few!), and a lovely dinner. My group had all been sitting in our selected position since lunchtime, but I got there late after working all day.
Anyway, I’m so glad I made the effort to go along and join them, and the fireworks truly were spectacular. The crowds were phenomenal, but I’d still do it all again next year given the chance! Here are a few photos of the fireworks at midnight, along with a shot of how clearly we could see the harbour bridge in front of us … prime real estate, we had, that’s for sure LOL.
and the piece de resistance for me … look at all that gunpowder going up … this little Annie was in childlike heaven!!! 😀
If you want to see a quick video clip of the start of the fireworks, you can check it out here! And if you have more time to spend and fancy watching the first 8 whole minutes of some spectacular fireworks, check out the You Tube video here 😀
Candles/Carols in the Domain Sydney-style
We had a lovely time at the carols last night – while we couldn’t see the stage clearly from where we were sitting, we could just see the large screen to follow who was on stage. They had a good line-up of local singing stars including Delta Goodrem, Guy Sebastian, Shannon Noll, Paulini, and Brian McFadden plus others. We had a star of our own, though, as we found ourselves joined by a certain ‘Gladiator’ along with his family, bodyguard and nanny … definitely a highlight of the night for me! You can see him in the sunglasses just behind us (I felt uncomfortable taking more photos as he was enjoying a family night out, and I thought that would be too intrusive) 🙂
The great thing about the Sydney event is that you can buy a “Candle Bag” for charity, which has 4 candles with cup-holders to sit them in – it looks so pretty looking out over the event when darkness falls to see all of the candles lit up around the crowds. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a good photo to share though.
There was a short firework display at the start of the show, and another final short fireworks display at the end.
All-in-all it was a fun night – although my head was suffering overnight due to the consumption of too much wine and the excitement of sharing the night with Mr C 😉
Today will be spent finishing the Christmas decorations off, I think, then doing a spot of housework … I bought a new attachement for my vacuum cleaner making it semi-bagless, so I’ll have to trial it to see if it works well … nothing but glamorous stuff for me today – serves me right, I’ve been having waaaay too much fun lately! LOL 😛
Sunday … not quite a day of rest!
I just realised I haven’t finished posting about our girlie weekend away last weekend … so here’s the final instalment – that is, if I can remember everything now!!!
After imbibing a fair bit of vino on the Saturday, and the fact I was driving, we took it a lot easier on the Sunday as far as alcohol intake was concerned. That doesn’t mean to say we cut back on the places we visited or the enjoyment we got … we sure as heck made the most of the day, and couldn’t have crammed any more into it if we tried!
Our first port of call was into the nearby factory showroom of the Hunter Valley Chocolate Company, where we sampled different fudges and chocolate – and we all came out with little packages of fudge for a treat when we got back home. We’d been told there was a chocolate fountain there, where you could dip in strawberries and marshmallows, but alas we’d been wrongly advised. We did find out, however, that they had another shop at one of the vineyards, so we added that to our “must do” list for later 🙂
Then we continued on to Adina Wines, as Lisa wanted to try some Pinot Gris/Pinot Grigio wines, and none of the vineyards we visited on the Saturday has this varietal. Adina was on the way to our next official destination, so we called in for a spot of wine-tasting for Lisa. It worked too, as she happily came away with some spoils from there, as well as learning the differences between the Gris and Grigio names (one is from the Italian region, and the other French) – good to know they’re essentially the same thing!
After Adina, we continued to our first destination, which was Drayton’s Family Wines (you may remember the name as the one in the news a couple of years ago when there was an explosion in the vineyard where the one of the vintners was killed and someone seriously injured/burned) – I totally fell in love with a Chocolate Port that I’d bought from Flaschengeist in Melbourne, but haven’t been able to find who actually makes it … anyway we heard that Drayton’s do a Chocolate Port so that was our first official port of call. Unfortunately the port was nothing like the one I loved, so it didn’t come home with us … however after sampling the “Christmas pudding in a glass” I fell in love with their Muscat, so that was my treat for the morning.
Our next stop was a few metres up the road, back to Robyn Drayton’s where we’d bought the white port from the previous day. Our plan here was to have a Devonshire Tea – and it was as scrummy as we’d hoped for 😀
After our Devonshire Tea, we drove back to Pokolbin Village Shops where we spent a fair bit of time in the Smelly Cheese Shop sampling cheeses and stocking up on some to bring home. We also bought a few more gourmet delights as well, finishing off with a Gelati.
After the shops we visited another winery – this time Brokenwood Wines. I tried their Sangiovese wine, while the girls tried a few of their whites. I don’t think we bought anything from there (shock, horror!), as you can generally buy their wines from bottle shops at a much lower price. Most of the other vineyards we’d bought from only sell from the cellar door.
Our final wine stop for the day was to Peterson’s Champagne House, where Hunter Valley Chocolate Company had a lovely shop set up … along with their chocolate fountain, woohoo!! It was a compulsory purchase of strawberries on a stick covered in warm chocolate from the chocolate fountain … sheer bliss! We then popped really quickly to the next door building to check out the sparkling wines (Katie’s favourite) where both of the girls came out with a bottle of Blush each 🙂
We finished the day off with a spot of girlie pampering at the local Reflections Day Spa where Lisa and I both had a 1/2 hour relaxation massage, and I had my eyebrows shaped and eyelashes tinted … what an awesome end to an awesome weekend! (I’d really hoped for a remedial massage, as I’ve been suffering quite badly with neck pain and stiffness over the last couple of weeks, but the guy who does them wasn’t there that day – a relaxation massage was a good alternative, though). After our relaxation we drove home singing along to Christmas carols … life just doesn’t get better than that!! 😀
It’s only the second ‘real’ girlie weekend I’ve had (the first one was having a weekend away at Toowoon Bay in October), and I hope it won’t be the last … it was awesome!!!
Since we’ve been home I’ve done one whole row of about 20 smyrna crosses for my current stitching projec, and that’s about it! My stitching has been non-existent, so I hope to get a couple of hours in this morning to make up for it. Then the rest of the day will be spent doing housework and getting the place ready to have the Christmas decorations put up, so not much stitching to be had this week, me thinks. Next weekend is a write-off as well, as we have our Christmas party on Friday night, followed by a stitching GTG at Karen’s on Saturday (really looking forward to that), followed by a holiday back home – so you’re unlikely to see much posting from me between now and Christmas … with any luck, thought, I might get a tiny bit of stitching done in NZ! 😀
