Travel Blog: Canberra 2023

Trying to make the most of opportunities this year, when Steve was sent to Canberra for work in April and it happened to fall over the school holidays, the girls and I booked some flights to join him. Steve worked Tuesday to Thursday and then took Friday off so we could have the long weekend together. School started again on the Monday, so it was a quick trip, but still lots of fun. 

The weather was cold, but clear skies for most of the time. We spent loads of time on the Friday at Questacon, where Steve was in his science element, explaining all sorts of things to the girls and just generally having a great time. 

We went to the War Memorial. 

And up Mt Ainsley. 

The next day we did a walk through aviary, and a round of Cockington Green. Before going to the Arboretum. 

The Arboretum turned out to be fantastic. We had thought we were only going to spend an hour or two there, to let the girls have a play in the park, but we ended up staying for ages. There were heaps of different gardens to explore (including bonsai!) and the girls just had lots of fun running around. 

The weather on Sunday was rubbish, but we were meeting up with friends to go to church and then hang out before our flight home, so it all worked out ok. The colours on the trees were pretty spectacular for us Brisbane-ites and overall, it was just a lovely little spontaneous trip for us. 

Book Week

It truly is the most wonderful time of the year when people are talking about reading, books and characters that have influenced their lives. Book Week is just magnificent. Even when I see characters that were definitely movies first, I'm not too worried, because for everyone one of those, there are five more kids dressed up as someone they read about first. 

This year was a no sewing year for us. Not by design, but just serendipity. Sophie wanted to be Anna-Beth from the Percy Jackson series. Arguably the hardest costume, because finding an orange shirt proved to be incredibly difficult. Once we had that though, my friend Amy was kind enough to print and iron on the appropriate logo. 

Rachel wanted to be Lavender from Matilda. Mostly because she has a pet newt called Isaac. I guess this was the sewing part of the costumes, because I did whip up that little lizard the night before. We could have used some more forethought though, since the legs didn't turn out at all, and I ended up sewing them on inside out, but whatever. Rachel sewed the eyes on herself like the good little sewer she is. We borrowed her a different school uniform dress from a friend on the street. 

I got to have two Book Weeks, so I recycled the Mary Poppins from last year, and went as Matilda on the second day. I based my Matilda costume off the stage musical, since I wanted to be able to sing the songs. Borrowed a grey skirt from a girl at church (it's her high school skirt), and then wore a Cue shirt of Sarah's that was in my dress up box, along with my blazer and tie from when I lived in Japan. 

Look around, look around, how lucky we are to be alive right now! Here is me as Matilda leading the revolt against the Trunchbull at school. Some days are the best. 

Despair Dress Hopefully Redeemed

Much much earlier in the year, I decided I wanted to make a replica of a Princess Highway dress that I love to wear. I'd already made replicas of a skirt, which I feel was very successful, since I was able to reuse it to make my Mary Poppins skirt for Book Week last year, so I was pretty confident that I could replicate this dress. 

I'm fairly sure I did a mock up of the bodice in leftover sheet fabric, and then turned my attention to some Japanese fabric I had in my stash. It was a lovely cherry blossom print, and there were meters and meters of it. I thought it would look really lovely, so I lay it out and got started. 

Then I found out it was very sheer. I hadn't noticed before because it had come folded over, into what would be a good width for kimono making, but when I unfolded it, I discovered it's true see-through nature. Totally fine, I rationalize, I'll just line it. I've got loads of lovely cotton bedsheets that will work perfectly. So I cut the bodice and everything is going smoothly, before I remember, now the skirt has to be lined, my pocket construction won't work the way it was supposed to. Sigh. So I've got to rethink all of that. 

The other thing I've got to rethink entirely, is how to cut the skirt out. The fabric is only about 60cm across, which is pretty narrow. One width, won't be enough for a front panel of the skirt. Two is a bit much, but doable, except it lands me with a centre front seam, which I don't think I can stand. I did sew it with the centre seam initially and it did turn out I hated it. So then I unpicked it all, and cut one of them into two and sewed them either side of the front (is this making sense to anyone?). 

The skirt of the dress was definitely much fuller than it needed to be, but the fabric was so sheer and I was using the selvage edges for the skirt, sides, rather than have to deal with firstly working out by how much smaller to make each panel and then spend twice as long on each seam because I would have had to French Seam them to make them sturdy and beautiful. 

It turned out that I had also cut the skirt panels excessively long, and the hem on them was turning out to be ginormous. At this point, I was so over this dress. What I had thought was going to be a beautiful, flowing easy to wear dress, was turning out to be a layered, bulky monstrosity. Not sure it would ever recover, I put it on the dress form and tried adding belts to see if that helped things.

. 

It did. A bit. So after another week or so of procrastination, I just finished the hem and called it done. 

I've honestly been having a rough year in my mind, and this sewing experience did not help things. Even though I've since made other, much more successful projects, I'm still not feeling all there. I did wear the dress twice before the weather got too cold, in an attempt to move past the somewhat disastrous sewing experience. But I was not feeling like I would reach for it too quickly when the weather changed. 

What I did do, after a sewing break and a palette cleanser, was use the pattern, and all I'd learned from making it, to make another dress. This time out of a (non-sheer) cotton that mum picked up on sale at Spotlight. 

This dress worked exactly as I had wanted. This dress fit so well, sewed without having to rethink or unpick anything. This dress looks beautiful on the inside as well as the outside, because I did do French Seams on the sides and finished the other edges with bias binding. This dress has pockets to write home about and is exactly what I need to wear for a great day. 

I listened to a sewing podcast recently which talked about taking the time to reclaim the items that you didn't have the best experience making. Make new memories with that item, so you can move past the bad ones and still enjoy it. 

I guess I don't often have too many bad sewing experiences, or items that I'm so frustrated with that I can't bring myself to wear. The last one I can remember was this dragonfly dress, which wasn't a terrible experience so much as turning out to be not my style of dress after all. Maybe it was time, but listening to the podcast did make me consider the cherry blossom dress again. I should give it another go. 

After all, I'm the only one who knows about the sewing grief I experienced, and I don't need to let it stop me wearing it. Also, it did pave the way for a dress I do truly love, so it can't be all that bad, right? 

What they Wore

I realized as I flicked back through the very haphazard posts of this year, that I neglected to share what the girls wore to guides the night they celebrated the Coronation of the King at Guides. I made the crowns, which I talk about here, but didn't follow up with a quick post about the rest of their outfits. 

They were pretty funny picking out dresses, because I have made them loads of princess style dresses which still fit (see red one here and blue one here), but for some reason, they wanted to wear anything but that. In the dress ups, they found an Asian style dress I had bought in New Zealand of all places back when I was 17, and my formal dress, which my mum had made in the same year. 

Rachel was enamored with my formal dress, and Sophie loved the Asian style one. Unbelievably, Sophie was also tall enough to get away with wearing it, without me having to do any adjustments. It was a little long, but with the side splits, it didn't matter. 

Rachel's on the other hand, needed a fair few things adjusted to make it wearable. I asked her if she wanted me to remove the sleaves that I had put on spontaneously one year when I was working at an OSCH and we had a dress up day. She told me no, she loved the sleeves. So I just tucked them up a bit to make them short enough for her arms and otherwise left them. 

Then I took up the shoulders, hem of the underskirt and tacked up the sheer overlayer in places to give it a swishy ball-gown feel. The dress was a bit chaotic, but very Rachel. Sophie was very particular about how she was a Princess of Wisdom and I do feel that she nailed that look. My red and blue dresses did get used on the night by some other girls who needed a dress, so good to know my sewing didn't go to waste after all. 

Belated Camping Memories

 Much earlier this year, back in April actually, I took the girls camping. We went to the usual spot for a "just the girls and I" camping trip, since it's easy and still fun. The difference this time, was that we also took some friends. The girls cousin Hugo and our friend Mia both have Dads who are into camping, but their Mums are not so much. Kind of like Steve and I, but reverse. 

Anyway, we booked a couple of nights and the kids had a blast. It was a bit rainy, but dry enough for us to venture out and see the glow worms at the Natural Bridge the first night. 

The next day we did the Warrie Circuit, which I a little bit regret suggesting, since the rainy-ness had made a lot of mud. We did the walk in good spirits, only a little complaining from the kids at then end, which was abated when I told them I'd dish out a marshmallow for every hundred steps we went up. 

While I could barely move the next three days from the pain in my knees and hips (welcome to old age?), the trip overall had been a success. I'd like to thank the playdough I packed for entertaining the kids for a lot of our campsite down time, and the audio book, Have Sword, Will Travel by Garth Nix and Sean Williams, which also kept them occupied and resting for the before bedtime hour and the two hours it took us to pack up in the morning. 

On the way home, we stopped off at the Gold Coast for a play and an impromptu swim (kids only!) Sophie cooked us sausages on the BBQ for lunch and we picked up a pie from Yatala for dinner. It was beautiful and a lovely reminder that we live in a beautiful part of the world.