mortiz044

The tandem kayak that we purchased for a joint Christmas present has not been used all that much.  Not because we haven't wanted to, but because it has been so wet and rainy and not the sort of weather you want to be sitting in. Someone asked me how much rain we have had this year and even we were surprised that to date we have had over a metre of rain.  That is 1040 mm or almost 42 inches on the old scale.  It has been very wet and I just wish that we could send it south to the ones - including our son - who need it the most. But, getting back to the kayak, last weekend was sunny and warm so we packed up the cruiser and headed over to Tinaroo Falls Dam for a paddle.  I had printed out the National Parks map of Danbulla National Park that encompasses Tinaroo.  There are numerous campsites that are very well maintained with clean toilets, mowed grassed campsites, and more than a hundred fire pits have recently been placed strategically around the campsites.  We drove into each one o

Last week the rest of the world celebrated Valentines Day.  We only give it a passing thought as we try and celebrate our love for each other every day.  However we did break out the pink champagne and sat outside to watch the sun go down on Valentines Day. On the weekend we very belatedly celebrated a friends 60th birthday.  We were overseas for his party in October and we apparently missed out on a wonderful night (insert sad face!).  We decided that we should do something special for a 60th birthday present so we booked a two bedroom apartment at Coconut Grove in Port Douglas and made dinner reservations at Nautilus Restaurant. Coconut Grove is an apartment block that we have had our eye on for a potential place to live out our retirement years but it's not to be as we found out. Although you can own an apartment in the complex you can only live in it a maximum of three months per year! It was the right choice to stay here because we could really get a feel for the place and I m

I still have copious amounts of lemons and passionfruit.  I have given away as many as I possibly can but still the fruit bowl groans under the weight of all that fruit.  I have also frozen as much as I possibly can but honestly, I don't like the frozen product as much as the fresh.  So I am forever google searching for ideas.  I came across a recipe for lemonade yesterday that was infused with ginger.  It is so bloody delicious and refreshing.  Just the thing for the warmer weather. I also found a recipe for Passionfruit Curd that uses 11 passionfruit!  Tick!  It comes from one of my favourite chefs....Nigella.  It made quite a large batch so I was able to give some to my gardener who so carefully tends to all my passionfruit vines. Something else I stumbled on was a recipe for Avocado Pesto tossed over zucchini noodles and a few tomatoes thrown in for good measure.  It is the perfect meal for my 5:2 fasting day as it comes in at just under 300 calories.  Needless to say it is del

For many years I was a scrapbooker.  Actually I started scrapbooking soon after we lost our eldest son.  Although I could never bring myself to do a full album of photos of our son, I put together lots of albums of family photos.  I found that when I was scrapbooking I could retreat into my own world, and not have to think about anything.  It was very therapeutic.  But over the last couple of years and many dozens of albums later I gave up the hobby.  It dawned on me that even though I enjoyed the scrapbooking, I had no idea how I was going to store all these albums when we eventually moved into a smaller dwelling.  Plus, who really wants to look at albums that are essentially, now,  about the holidays we have taken and the places we have visited.  I certainly couldn't see my youngest son wanting them :-) However last month when I was reading my friend Tania's blog, she showed us the Heidi Swapp Travel Journal. You can read about it here .  I was intrigued.  It was a very easy