Shoulder Bags

Even though the girls have a plethora of bags, they have taken to using an old shoulder bag I have at any possible moment. My bag has sushi print on it, and I'm fairly sure it was a 21st present from my childhood friend Alice. I had been using it as my "church bag" so it had my housewife, a pen and my bible in it ready to go every Sunday, but I'd swapped it out for a new one we bought in Japan (on Shodoshima), because it had started fraying. 

The girls had swooped it up, and were using it alternately. After I quizzed them about why their other bags were not enough, it turned out they liked the one long strap, over the shoulder, design of my sushi bag. Rachel also told me that her Falinks Bag just wasn't big enough for a morning at church, especially since she had been taking extra books to lend to a friend each week. 

So I made them bags. I let them pick fabric from my stash, copied the design and did some sewing. 

It was a little hard cutting into the kookaburra fabric, knowing I was taking 2m of potential dress down to 1.5, but better to be using it right? And I'm fairly sure I could still get something great out of 1.5m.

Similar with the cool sushi fabric that Sophie chose. 

Anyway I lined them with fabric that matched and made sure they had pockets and key clips. Sophie's lining fabric was so thin that I added an extra layer of random bedsheet-fleece that I had to give it a bit more stability. The white with small rainbow hearts fabric is a hand me down from Aunty Sue, and the other navy one that became the pocket is scraps from her quilt. 

Rachel's was lined with fabric she had left over from making Sophie a pencil case for her birthday, (Japan fabric!) as well as some dress off cuts and one of the fabrics she and I picked out for Sophie's Quilt that Sophie decided she didn't want in the end (those cute butterflies). 

I'm pleased to say that the new bags have been well received and we managed to clean out the old bags so there is a much more manageable bag situation at the front door. 

Antisocial Quilt Making

School this year has been a lot of work for me. I don't want to go into it much but I've been asked to teach a second subject area alongside Japanese, without any additional time for planning or actual teaching. It's been a bit rough to say the least. When I got to the end of term and holidays started, I really needed to switch off. 

So I spontaneously decided to make Sophie a quilt. 

She's kind of needed one for a little while now, since the one I made for her back in 2013 is only a single. While it does still fit, Sophie is the type of sleeper who likes to get a bit tangled up, and it wasn't cutting it. She'd found the Queen Quilt that I'd made for Steve and I (pre kids - way back in 2009!) and had claimed it as her own. Which was great for her, because she could roll around, wrap up and sleep peacefully, but not great for Steve and I who were now without a quilt. 

I'd seen a video pop up on YouTube of a "Floating Lanterns" quilt that seemed pretty easy to replicate. I dug through my fabric stash and pulled out some ideas that I thought Sophie would like, and then took Rachel on a trip to Spotlight to get the plain colour for the sashing/background and she helped me pick out a few more colours to compliment things. 

Sophie did have a look over the fabric and veto some, but was pretty happy with most of them, so I got to work. Cutting hundreds of squares and rectangles to sew. Can't say I love this part of the quilting process, especially when it's so reliant on doing the maths right and then counting correctly as you go. I was some squares and rectangles short when it came to sewing, but when I did cut more squares and sewed them in, I found I had excess blocks. Oh well!

The above photo is Sophie lying next to what I think will be the layout and me trying to decide if it's going to come out long enough for her. I was working on roughly double bed measurements but it didn't seem wide enough to me. I was contemplating taking one of the top rows of blocks and moving it to the side (rather than making more), but then that seemed like it would leave the quilt too short for Sophie's long legs. 

In the end, I used the surplus bits and cut and sewed a few more to gain an extra row to add to the width of the quilt. Once I'd lay out the blocks in their final pattern, I had to tell everyone we couldn't open the doors because the wind was my enemy. Also, we were going to have to walk around it being on the floor for a while, since sewing takes time. 

At one stage I thought I had sewn enough and could risk the doors half open, but that resulted in the wind blowing away about 85% of the rest of the layout before I could stop it. Thankfully I'd taken a lot of photos, so I just needed to sort through and lay them out again. Lesson learned though. Once it was finally sewn together, I was well pleased with the result, so I added the boarder and went to get some backing fabric from Spotlight (on sale whew!)

I am still not amazing at actual quilting, but I have been watching some videos on YouTube from Pin Cut Sew, and I must have picked up something, because this quilted much better than my previous attempts. I was going to wing it when it came to the quilting lines, but I ended up pre-marking them, because my blocks were not all square and I figured if I was juggling the quilt through the machine I didn't want to have any extra things to think about. It was worth it, because it did make the quilting easier. 

Sophie went away to camp on Saturday morning and I had the quilt bound and finished for her when she came home on Monday. She's given the quilt a stamp of approval and Steve and I have reclaimed our quilt once more. I was pretty anti social for the ten days that I worked on this quilt. Headphones on and off to my little sewing area. Thankfully my family knew I needed the down time and were gracious to give it to me. 

This quilt has some beautiful fabrics in it, PJ fabric, Luke's Christmas shirt, Sophie's halter top/shorts, some leftover maple leaves and cat fabric that Rachel bought in Japan and used to make Sophie a birthday pencil case, some other cat fabric that I got in Japan for Sophie too. I had enough of the pinky floral print (from Sophie's halter top trial) to make the binding for the quilt too. I also learnt that polyester thread does not play well with the very hot iron that I used to press the seams. I melted quite a few rows of stitching making this quilt!

There is something really lovely about seeing a home made quilt on a bed. Hours of work, various skills and at the end, something beautiful that will last a life time. Well worth the effort.

Belated Birthday Post

Is this the year where I only post about people's birthdays months after the event? It happened with Steve, it's happening with Sophie, so maybe? 

It's a short one, but I don't want to forget it. Sophie is now 13. She's taller than me. She loves Greek myths and musicals. She's committed to BJJ trying to get her next belt (it's a yellow and black, so they call it the "Vegemite belt"). When she's not reading, Sophie is drawing on every bit of paper available. 

This sweet girl didn't want to try to juggle mixing friends from various circles for a party, so we had a casual family afternoon tea and a movie night. A plain chocolate cake was requested and I added the decorations (it's a Parthenon and the sister blades (a weapon from the Hades 2 Switch game)). 

Rachel made her a new pencil case with fabric she bought in Japan. These two together are like sunshine to me. Sophie's cooking continues to expand and the highlight of Rachel's holidays (that she shared at the first night back to Guides) was eating all of Sophie's cooking, especially the lemon bars. 

Wicked

Throwback to the cinema release of Wicked: For Good in November 2025, when I convinced the girls it would be fun to go in costume. 

Don't they look fabulous! 

And I'm super happy to say that I borrowed the costumes from my teacher friends who had them on hand from Book Week. All I did was some adjustments (Glinda's dress originally had the huge puffy sleeves from the Wizard of Oz movie, and the black cape for Elphaba was originally under the dress).

I did make Rachel her hat the morning of the day we were going to the movie, with lots of scrap black fabric that I somehow had lying around. She loved it. I loved her commitment to the green face paint! 

I also managed to loose my good sewing scissors that day though, so I can't look back without some sadness. We are nearly three months on and they haven't shown up yet!

Graduation Outfit

When we returned to Australia, Sophie immediately asked if she could cut her hair. It, like everything else about Sophie, had grown in Japan and she was getting sick of it. I'm all for kids having autonomy, but I did veto this for the moment because, being in grade 6, graduation was coming up. Having been away from school for six months, Sophie was unaware of what graduation even was, but on returning to school found it was indeed all the kids were talking about. 

Sophie was quickly inducted into "all you need to know for graduation" which mostly consisted of the girls discussing what they would be wearing. Not wanting to go shopping (a girl after my own heart, I'm so proud!), but realising that she'd literally grown out of everything possible, we spent a week brainstorming what she might want to wear. In the end, she asked me to make something and we did a bit of inspo finding on Pintrest as we looked for the style she was after. 

Initially she was after a jumpsuit, with a halter style top. I did a bit of checking to see which features were important to her, and then offered to make it but separates, rather than the jumpsuit, so it would be easier to use the "facilities". The good news on that front was that I had a pattern for the halter top in the style she wanted and the pants seemed easy enough to draft, since she wanted wide leg. 

I dug out my pattern for Liz Hayworth's Zero Waste halter top from the September instalment of the Year of Zero Waste Sewing. I also dug out the one I made and had Sophie wear it around for a day or two at home. Halters can sometimes look like they are going to work and then in reality, can annoy the heck out of you when you actually wear them. Sophie did find it comfy though, so I got to work. 

Wearable draft fit check: looks good!

I was pretty confident with the style, but still wanted to check the size on her, so I measured her up and made a wearable-draft out of some lovely light cotton I'd gotten at a second hand fabric market. It came together beautifully and the fit was great. For the pants, I did a couple of trials with an old green bedsheet until I was happy with how it came together. I used the pattern I had for her PJ shorts as a base and did some tweaking. I don't seem to have any photos of that drafting process. 

Time for the real deal! 

We bought fabric from Spotlight: a gorgeous linen in a coral pink colour. Everything about sewing this was beautiful. I was making it at around the same time as my Experimental Dress, which was much more hacked together and "making it up as I go" vibes. By contrast, sewing Sophie's outfit was smooth and professional. Thanks to the drafting, everything lined up. I'd already gone through most of the construction sequence at least once, if not twice, so I knew what order to sew things in. The seams were finished with the swishes methods I could manage (French seams of beauty!) Magically, I didn't sew any parts backwards, despite the "right side" and "wrong side" of the fabric being indistinguishable. 

Her only negative feedback was that I could have made the pockets bigger. 

I sewed it pretty early in the term. I think I didn't want to accidentally leave it too late and then have an enormous panic while I was in the midst of reports. Also, I was just enjoying getting to make something so beautiful for my daughter. Since I made it early enough, it was ready for Steve's 40th, which meant she could take it for a test run, though under some very strict instructions about being careful with food and no rolling around on the grass. 

Sophie looks like an absolute rock star in this outfit. She is so comfortable, everything fits where it should and the fabric is soft. I don't think I even noticed the time it took to sew. And, she did get her hair cut. I did it the morning of graduation day. Graduation was a success, and she's planning on wearing it for Christmas. I'm glad, because as I look back at the photos, I think she's grown in the six weeks since I first made it for her... 

Sumo!

We were pretty keen on going to see sumo while we were in Japan. This national sport is so iconic and different that it just seemed like a must do. Unfortunately, the tournament in Tokyo only lasts three weeks and the locations in other cities (Nagoya and Osaka) didn't match our time line. We did our research and attempted to get tickets, but they sold out in about an hour of opening. 

You could get resale tickets from sites like Klook, but they were easily four times the price, and for a back row seat, it just didn't seem worth it. It seemed like our chance was over and we just had to be content with the sumo we saw back in May at a local festival. By chance, my friend David travelled around to Osaka and told me about a sumo show he saw there. 

The Sumo Hall Hirakuza Oaska put on a sumo show experience that was as good as we were going to get. We only had two and a bit days in Osaka before we flew home, but I was pretty determined to fit it in. We booked a night session that included a bento dinner to enjoy while you watched. 

The show had an introduction section (explaining the rituals and history), sumo training and a match. The training was impressive, since the sumo are so flexible. Then they had people from the audience "fight" the sumo. The whole thing was very staged, but it was oh so fun. When they announced at the start that people from the audience could sign up for the raffle to fight the sumo, Sophie leapt up immediately and joined the line of men who were putting their names down. 

We enjoyed the show thinking it was pretty unlikely Sophie would be chosen, but lo and behold, her number was drawn from the box! It was hilarious! 

Sumo getting ready for their match.

They took her and three other guys back stage to get ready (into ridiculous, puffy sumo suits) and then the competition began. The three men went first, each choosing a sumo to fight and before being thrown to the ground. When the second guy went down, I turned to Steve and said: "Sophie's going to win this." 

Sophie got up and they asked her name and where she was from. The cheer from the crowd when they heard Australia was huge. She was quite cautious at the start of the match, but the sumo she fought was so fun and great with her and the crowd was cheering so much, soon she was pushing away to try to knock him down. You can watch the video here. 

Rachel's reaction when the match ended was pretty fabulous. 

We were pretty proud of our Sophie for getting up and giving it a go. What a way to finish up our time in Japan! 

This is the story she tells everyone when they ask how was Japan and what was the highlight. 

Got to say, it was a pretty big highlight for me too. So fun! 

The Red Yukata

As hopefully most people know, I regularly wear (and make) kimono. Usually I use my job as an excuse (Japanese teacher!), but I often just wear them because they are beautiful. At the end of the day, they are just clothes like any other and there is no real reason not to wear them. Spoiler warning - this post is going to get into sewing in a bit of detail. 

Anyway, I didn't bring any to Japan with me (which honestly made me a little sad), but I knew I'd likely pick up at least a couple, and I was intending to get some fabric to sew them as well. I have bought more than I thought I would, and also somehow been gifted an enormous amount of them too. I'll have to take some photos of the "haul", but I may as well wait until the end of our time... just in case I accidentally get another. In all honesty, that seems unlikely, but you never know. 

My friend David who I went through uni with back in the day was in Japan for a month, and since he also sews kimono, we decided to meet up in Nippori (fabric town) and do some shopping. David also introduced me to a wholesale kimono shop owner in the back streets, that I'd never been to before. 

It was the most Japanese shopping experience since we came in, shoes off and sitting on the tatami among the fabrics. We were given cold tea to drink (it was a hot day) and there was lots of chatting before the shopping actually began. The very lovely Murata-san (Mr Murata) gave me a full run down of the fabric and how you know it's authentic etc. I did already know this, but it was beautiful to hear him talk about his craft. 

I was honestly so tempted by the designer fabrics but they were really too far out of my price range, even wholesale. Knowing I have a ton of blue yukata at home, and that I'd just bought some green ones, I was really intentional about looking for designs or colours that I didn't have, wanting to make a meaningful purchase. After much deliberation, I ended up buying two bolts of yukata cloth (yukata is summer kimono - light cotton fabric).

Then home with my prizes I went. There was no real rush to sew these, but Sophie was keen on one to match a cat obi that I had bought her. My plan is for the girls and I to wear yukata to the summer festivals (lost of people do). Given that summer was at least six weeks away, there wasn't a hugely pressing deadline, so I dallied with my cross stitch some more before I began. 

Here is the cat obi with the matching yukata fabric. Red is actually a very non-traditional yukata fabric colour. People usually wear cool colours through out summer, trying to suggest that even though it's humid and hot, they aren't uncomfortably so. This is probably why I have so many blue yukata on hand. I loved the maple leaves on this one, in their pools of water, telling the world that even though it's red, we are still going to be cool. 

I've made a stack of yukata/kimono now (I think the count is up to 8?), but I still need notes to help me remember the measurements. Alas - I had not thought to bring them to Japan with me and they were trapped in Australia! Luckily I did remember most things, one of the yukata that I'd bought was also handsewn, so I could measure parts of that for reference, and there is a somewhat helpful YouTube video by Billy Matsunaga that was also good. 

Honestly, I feel the kimono is one of the oldest forms of Zero Waste sewing that we have. The cloth is woven on a bolt that is exactly the right width and you adjust for size by having bigger or smaller seams. The fabric is cut into rectangles and there are distinct places (in the main body and sleeves) that you can hide extra fabric that could be let out later for growth or taken in. It's like magic. 

Since I didn't have my full notes on hand, I did struggle with the cutting a little, and was a little unsatisfied with the outcome. Even though I spent at least two full days mulling over, measuring, re-measuring, writing notes, drawing diagrams and measuring again! That said, the end product has nothing wrong with it; it's all that it needs to be. I did have a square and a half of fabric left, but in hindsight, I think what threw me was that the more modern bolts are made wider (35cm instead of 30) and longer to accomodate people getting taller. 

Mostly done, just the sleeves and collar to go!

Anyway, I triple checked all my pattern placement so there would be good visuals when it was done and got to sewing. Hand sewing that is. The whole thing. Don't think it took longer than a week, and I did stacks of the hemming and tacking down seam allowance while we watched the Eurovision semis and finals on YouTube. 

First fitting, wearing the obi that was closest rather than going upstairs to get the cat one.

Sophie actually loves it, so that is great. After the first fitting (pictured above) I realised I sewed the sleeves on too short to start with, so I took them off and put them on again. One of them I put on inside out, so I had to take that off and put it back on again a third time. Goodness was that a frustrating (albeit short) delay. Then I borrowed an iron from a friend to give everything a final press. 

Sophie humoured me a second time to put it on for "good" photos in the outside natural light, and Rachel decided to get in on the fun too. Can't wait to be wearing mine too as we eat kakigori (shaved ice) and watch fireworks in summer! 

Japanese Primary School Part 1

Call us crazy, but we've enrolled the girls into a local Japanese primary school. We are living in Japan after all and wanted to make the most of the experience. The girls had mixed feelings about this, but we were pretty confidant that the benefits would outweigh the potential troubles. 

School started on the 7th of April, just over a week ago now. For primary school, everyone has to go to the primary school in their local area and all the kids walk to school. Even year one. All by themselves. The school has set routes that the students follow, so there is a lot of students streaming past in the morning and afternoon. They do have some parent helpers/teachers out with flags along the routes to help kids get familiar with it, but for the most part the thinking is that you are at school now, so it's time to be responsible. 

Higashi Yotsugi Primary School Hat

We only live a two min walk from our local school. I think the strangest thing about school so far has to be the rather overcomplicated timetable. There are six hour days, there are five hour days. There are days that are only four hours and finish before lunch. Then there is the B timetable, which also has five and six hour days, but finish at different times. Also, I don't think they count the 20 minutes of self study that students need to do when they arrive at school in this, although Rachel says her teacher gets in at 8:30 and class starts then. Who knows!

Inside school shoes ready for day one

The first day of school was a one hour day for Rachel, and a three hour day for Sophie, since she's in year six and has "leadership responsibilities". To be honest, even though I've written down what day is what on the calendar, I'm still never quite sure when they are coming home. I guess that's why the kids are trained to get to and from school all on their own, so it doesn't really matter. 

Part of Sophie's year six leadership responsibilities has been to look after a year one student every morning for the first two weeks of school. She has to get to school by 8:05 to meet the year one-er, make sure they put their bag away, go to the toilet, get a drink etc, then sit with them in class and read or draw together until it's time for the teacher to come in. 

It's free dress for primary school, though on the first day, Sophie did have to wear "ceremony clothes" (button up white shirt and black skort). The only thing that identifies the kids as school students is the really obvious school backpacks and their school hat. We did have to buy the sports uniform (white shirt, dark shorts, red/white reversible hat) for them to change into for sports. 

Speaking of sports uniforms, the girls take them to school on Mondays and bring them home on Fridays. I think this is strategic to help people not forget their uniforms, because with all the timetable changes, you never really know when you'll need it. Rachel had PE on Friday in the first week, and then on Monday in the second. The other thing they've needed to get changed into their uniforms for is the start of year doctors check ups. 

Yes, you read that right. Every student has multiple, dare I say, numerous doctors checkups at the start of the year. At the school, provided by the government. I'm talking movement/muscular skeletal checks, ear, nose and throat, asthma and heart as well as eye tests. It was pretty strange for the girls, even though I pre-warned them about it. 

Aside from that, the girls have settled into their classes really quickly. Rachel's teacher is pretty fabulous and makes sure he takes the time to check Rachel is understanding things. She is student number 30 in class 2 of year 5 (refered to as 5-2). Students sit in their number order (at least for the start of the year), and I think she likes it up in the back corner where she can look out the window. 

Sophie's teacher has been a little harder to get on board. I know she's focused on helping all the year six students "prepare for Junior High School", but it's still annoying. Sophie is number 20 in her class (6-1) and sits in the second row. I know this because when they had the start of year parent meeting on Friday last week, we got to go and sit in the classrooms, at the desks that our kids would sit at, and listen to the teacher tell us stuff. 

Most days the girls have come home with something new and fun that happened to tell us about. Scattered in these stories are moments of "Japanese all day makes my brain hurt", which was expected. On the first day, Rachel was delighted to report that her school had axolotl in the hallway on the first floor. We have been subsequently less excited seeing the conditions of the tank that these poor creatures are exisiting in. Nothing interesting in there at all; not even a rock for them to hide behind. It's the flip side of living somewhere like Japan, on one hand: cool axolotl! On the other hand: no care for animal rights.

Speaking of the flip sides of Japan, as I sat in Rachel's classroom listening to her teacher talk about things (and point out the work they had done that day on the black board (yes, you read that right - it was written with chalk and everything!)), I noticed that right under the fancy touch screen TV sat a still working cassette tape player. Oh Japan. One foot in the future and the other firmly in the past. 

There is lots more to say about Japanese schools, but I'll leave this here for now and you can come back another time to learn about school lunches, cleaning classrooms, clubs and all the different subjects! 

Sophie: 12

I was fine with Sophie growing ever upward - the knowledge of the inevitable "kids will be taller than me" was something that I knew from day one. But when I drew her new height line on the wall and it sat just two and a half centimetres under mine; wow was it suddenly all too real. 

Celebrations for this girl were a little strange this year. She did have a friend sleep over the night before her birthday, but woke up in the morning with a very runny nose kinda cold that Steve was sharing. So we cancelled the afternoon family gathering and just lay around the house, watching movies, playing games and generally being lazy. 

What we did get Sophie for her birthday though, was two tickets to see Six the Musical. So two weeks later, she and I hopped on a bus to the theatre. 

She was so excited to be seeing the show and I was excited to share it with her. Since I took her to see The Tiger Who Came to Tea for her third birthday, I have dreamed of many more such outings. We enjoyed the pre show hype and photo ops. She went halves with me in some merch (check out the shirt change below) and just generally got progressively more excited. 

Suffice to say, when things started she was grinning from ear to ear. It is fabulous show and so much fun to see it with her. Afterwards, we went to South Bank. Steve and Rachel drove in and we met some friends for a swim and BBQ dinner. It really did feel like we were finally having her birthday. 

Cake requested was chocolate with pink and green swirly icing. Yes, she really does love musicals. 

That's a Wrap

Reflecting that many bloggers out there do a wrap up post at the end of the year, neatly cataloging all their makes, or highs and lows to look back on in the future, I lamented to Steve that I can't do that since I've got so many things that I've made in the last six weeks that are as yet, un-blogged, my list would be pretty incomplete, or at least not a good reflection on the year. I guess people who blog for work can be a little more planned about things and maybe they are working in advance, but not so much with me. Even though I've been at the blogging for nearly 20 years now....

Anyway, in lieu of a "Here are all the things I made in 2024" I thought I'd do a little wrap up post with the fun things that have happened in the last six weeks that have helped the year speed to it's ending. Things that are just small and fun but special to us and I'll want to remember. 

The girls made boats. 

With an eleven week term to finish the year, the teachers at the girls school got creative and ran a bunch of activities to make the final week interesting and fun. One of these was a boat race across the school pool. Students were invited to make their own boat and it had to carry a ping pong ball across the eight metre pool. Both Sophie and Rachel were interested so we got into it. 

Inspired by the Pop-Pop Boat in Ponyo, they investigated different engines. Rachel made her boiler from a beer can and straws which was powered by steam when the heat from the candle did it's job. Sophie tried a variety of different designs - variations on the same theme - the most complex of which was bending copper pipes to be the boiler. Unfortunately her boat couldn't take the weight of the pipes and we had to try again. 

There was so much trial and error in both the boats. Loads of fixing one thing to have something new break. Sophie's especially which went from wood, to two layers of wood, to wood with balloons (supporting the weight of the pipes), and then to a variety of different milk bottle designs (when the balloons caused too much drag and we needed to nix the pipes in favour of a more compact boiler). After we finally gave in with the boiler, we switched to fan powered and Sophie did all the wiring to make the fan work from a 9V battery, including a switch in the circuitry. Thanks to girl guides for teaching her how to do most of that! 

Rachel, testing the Carmelita 3 in our neighbour's pool.

In the end we learnt a lot and had two functioning boats to launch in the pool on race day. Neither won, (or even made it all the way across the pool), but neither did they sink, so we still counted it a victory. The boats were named after we finished reading and watching the Netflix version of A Series of Unfortunate Events,  the Carmelita 3 (Rachel's boat), Beatrice 2 (Sophie's pipe boat) and The Persistence (Sophie's final fan boat). 

Sophie has been given the leadership role of Library Captain for 2025 at school. We are pretty proud of our girl, and think the role suits her to a T. Both girls actually signed up as Library Helpers this year and were very serious about turning up for their "shifts". In the last week of school when the kids were loitering around classrooms getting given jobs by teachers, both girls were requested at the library to help catalogue the new home readers. Hilarious. 

I came to school in my staff week to find this little beauty on my classroom door. I rescued him, took this selfie and he promptly jumped on my head. Managed to get him into a nearby garden to hopefully live out a full and happy life; it honestly made my day. 

Even when my school year wrapped up (a week earlier than the girls), I wasn't resting. Typically, I volunteered to help coordinate the Community Carols event hosted by the girls' school. It was a lot of work, easily twice the size of last year, but it made my heart oh so full to see the churches of the area coming together to celebrate Christmas and serve the community. 

After that, I spent the week packing things up and sorting things out and then Steve and I went off to Bundy for a quick one night (the girls started their holidays with sleepovers at grandparents) to celebrate Steve's sister's 30th. 

I got to make the cake. Which was a lot of fun. 

We had thought we were going to miss our Street Christmas Party (being in Bundy) but the Saturday night in Brisbane was so rainy they ended up postponing until the next day. Hooray! Steve and I could make it after all. The girls had made oreo truffles and my contribution to the food was this mango and avo sushi platter. 

Mango sushi - so delicious! 

Speaking of food, the following Saturday my family got together to celebrate what would have been my Pa-Pou's 100th birthday but also, 100 years of the Greek Faros Family in Australia. We all made greek food and had a lovely evening together. I contributed this bread which was just delicious. 

It was really lovely to be together sharing food and memories. I heard a language teacher recently mention that they feel bi-cultural, and I think I often feel that way. Growing up in Australia but with a strong connection to our Greek heritage. It's even more confused now with how influenced we are by my Japanese experiences, but I think it's something to embrace. What is God's vision of the future if not a city where every nation and every tongue is represented?  

Steve has continued sweating it out at Jiu-Jitsu each week, despite some injuries this year to level up to his purple belt. It's been over four years of training and he still loves it. Sophie had a six month break but has decided to give it another shot and now we can't keep her away - even in the heat of summer. 

Both girls helped to paint some Christmas decos for Church this year and Rachel is pretty proud of her little cow in the nativity scene. 

I have sewn so much - lots of presents and then just lots of little things. Actually looking forward to cataloging those as well (it kind gives January an easy start having all these things made and ready to blog about :P), just have to find the time. 

I'll finish this post of somewhat random collection of things with what I consider to be the Quote of the Year from Rachel. Last week, the girls had come with me to grab some groceries and we drove past school. I mentioned that the playground was dismantled (the P&C are funding a new one next year). Rachel says: "Oh that playground. I didn't play there much because it was always infested with children."