Bruce and I went to the 'Puddler' Restaurant last night for dinner. It was my birthday, so we decided to go all out and have one of the more expensive items on the menu, which was an ocean platter. It was the most delicious meal we have had out in a long time......a platter for 2 which consisted of a fresh whole lobster, crab, Moreton Bay bugs, oysters and king prawns. There was a seperate bowl on the platter which held a cream, wine and garlic sauce with mussels, scallops and calamari strips in it. This all came on a bed of salad with home made tartare sauce, limes and lemons. Fizzy finger bowls, excellent service, and the best palate cleanser I've tasted in a long time....fresh passionfruit, pulped mango, and champagne in a shot glass, just added the final touch. I could become quite addicted to the palate cleansers...YUM!!!
We were totally decadent with a home made liqueur chocolate pudding with melted chocolate sauce and ice cream for dessert, followed by very good coffee.
The waiter and waitress must have thought I was a total idiot because I took so many photo's while we were there. My excuse was that the photo challenge this week is titled 'dinner time', so I was snapping away trying all sorts of different shots. LOL!!!!
Here are some of those pics.....
Bruce having a wonderful time.

Sorry, I ate it before taking pics........
ooops, and again......
All I can say is it was too good to spend time taking pics when the plates, bowls and cups were full......

Today was a terribly hot day - 46C . There has been a lot of dust in the sky today, so much in fact that at around 3.30 today it looked like a grey overcast day. We have had quite a few grass fires around our area, and at 6pm tonight the big water helicopter flew very low over our house and filled up at the lake. I didn't have time to go and grab my camera, it all happened so quickly. Boy those guys are BIG.

Here are some pics of the sky full of dust........

At about 6.30 tonight the wind turned and brought with it lots of smoke from the fires. The smell was quite overpowering and made our eyes sting. It was so bad at one stage that while I was cooking dinner I got these photo's from our back door. You have to remember that even though this is 6.30pm, it is summer here and we have daylight saving, which means it doesn't get dark until around 9 to 9.30pm. The red ball is the sun poking through very thick smoke. The photo's are a bit darker than it actually was, but if I try to lighten them they lose clarity. This is how they came off the camera on a normal scenic setting.

This lasted for less than an hour, then we got the dusty, light, sky back again thankfully. It is now after 11 pm, and the air is still slightly smokey, but nothing like earlier today.

I just keep thinking about all of those poor, poor people who are experiencing devastating bush fires at the moment. Just horrendous! Our thoughts are with them, and those very brave souls who fight these awful fires......most on a voluntary basis. They really do the most amazing job.

We are hoping there may be a cool change tomorrow, but at this stage they are saying it will still be around 30C, but with cooler weather Monday and Tuesday....we sure do hope!!!!!

ADSR Challenge #9

This week’s challenge is: Generations.
Your scrapbook page completed for this challenge must include:
Photos of at least two generations of family members (the more generations, the better). KB and Friends specializes in vintage and retro-style digital scrapbooking kits, so we encourage you to dig out those old family photos and scan them, if you have any.
Lace.
Something metal, preferably, old metal.
At least one flower.
At least one vintage or retro-style element. It can be ephemera, an old book, an old clock, and so on.
Credits

Photo Challenge #5 Dinner Time

Bruce and I went out for dinner tonight, so this was the perfect opportunity to get some pics for this challenge.

Photo Challenge #4 - The Elements

I chose earth as my element. Because we are going throught the worst heatwave in over 100 years, and are still in the grip of a drought, that in the country regions, has been going on for a few years now, I thought I would portray the heat and drought in a picture of a dried up creek bed.

Its Been Over a Week!

My goodness, I couldn't believe it had been over a week since I last updated my blog........more than just a pic for the photo challenge. anyway!

On Sunday 25th January we finally got
to meet 2 of the wonderful girls from Bree's CT. We met as planned in the Botanical Gardens in Bendigo, with Pene and Sharon driving up from Melbourne on a very hot day. It was very nice under the shade of the trees in the park, so much so that we didn't realise quite how hot it was until we went to get some ice creams, and spent some time in the hot sun with no shade. We had an amazing day.

The girls were every bit as nice in real life as they've always seemed on-line, the kids all got along well, and we whiled away the afternoon with talking, cold drinks, picnic food........and LOTS of photo's. The kids had a huge playground to play in and lots of room to run around in the gardens, so most of the time they were happy to go off and do their own thing. I was really sorry when Pene had to leave, her children are gorgeous and she is a delight to be around.
We spent an extra couple of hours with Sharon and Toby, but finally had to pack up and leave, as we were taking Bree out for her birthday dinner. It was sad to see Sharon go. We had such a great day. I really hope we get to catch up again some time real soon.

Here are some more pics of our day.

We took Bree out to one of her favourite restaurants for her birthday dinner in the evening. We were able to get one of Bree's favourite meals, which is crayfish meal. 1/2 a cray, a couple of fresh oysters, prawns, king prawns done in filo pastry, salt and pepper calamari, salad and chips. YUM! Mick tried the duck in plum sauce, which was nice but very small. The girls had fettucine and another noodle dish....the girls LOVE noodles. We had a lovely night, but eventually had to get on home.

Monday 26th January is 'Australia Day' and therefore a public holiday. We went to a barby at Micks place in the afternoon.....another extremely hot day. Bree and the girls came, and Mick put on a fabulous meal for us all. I tried to get pics, but the girls were all tired and a bit grumpy, and it was so hot it left me feeling rather lethargic and unmotivated to keep chasing around trying to get that perfect shot.

In the end I only managed to get a couple of blurry shots of Ashlee who every time I pointed the camera her way pulled her T-shirt over her head....as in the pic posted, or poked her tongue out....charming!

I did get a shot of Mick cooking the barby and the dog was very accomodating, but that was mainly because she was so hot she didn't want to move lol!!!! I used one of the dog pics for my photo challenge photo last week.

These are my lo's for the ADSR - Challenge #7

For the challenge instructions for both of these challenges you can go to our ADSR site ozziegirlz

Credits

And Challenge #8 - the lo I scraplifted by Mru can be found at ozziegirlz. Go and check out Mru's gallery , she is a very talented digi scrapper.

Credits
And finally, last weekend, Bruce and I went out for a drive on Saturday afternoon. We went out to a beautiful spot that Bree and Sabby take the girls quite often. There are lots of rock pools, big trees.......and the afternoon we went there were LOTS of teenagers and family's there. My aim had been to get some photo's of the water flowing over the rocks, but there were so many people there that it was difficult to find a bit of water that didn't have a body in it lol!!! Hmmm, wonder if that is where the saying a 'body of water' came from??????

Anyway, here are some of the pics I did manage to get -

This tree caught my eye
firstly because of this huge hole in the trunk,
and secondly, because of the amazing texture of the trunk of the tree, which wasvery knobbly and rough, almost like
thorns. It was really something quite unique.
Well, thanks for staying with me to the end. Sorry it was such a long post this time, I will try to be more regular with my posts in future.