Around here - 1 second everyday in 2022

Gosh what a year it's been and up until the Queensland borders opened on the 13th December, 2021 things were pretty okay.  With interstate visitors bringing Covid to Queensland even though they have tested negative 72 hours before it's been scary to watch.  I haven't really gone anywhere and don't particularly want to go anywhere.  My friends 20 year old daughter got Covid a couple of days before Christmas and the whole family went into isolation.  Lots of people whom I follow IG in NSW & VIC over the past couple of years haven't caught Covid themselves even though it was everywhere and now these people are catching Covid.  With isolation it's hard to know how "normal" things are supposed to be really.  Coming from a State that had no Covid and when we did, it was managed extremely well however now Covid is everywhere in Queensland because the borders were open 2 weeks before Christmas.  My whole family is double vaxed and we are booked in for our Booster shots however I still don't want to get it regardless.  Today the numbers in Sydney were over 21,000 and yesterday they were 12,000 no wonder they are bringing it to Queensland.  So 2022 is going to look very different for us here however it's out of our control and all we can do is try and stay safe and get through one day at a time.

Now onto some more happier things my niece in Perth is going to do the "1 Second Everyday" video which at the end of the year you end up with a highlight real of 6 minutes.  As tomorrow is the 1st January I've decided to do this too and encouraging my kids to do it as well.  Elise Joy has a blog post on some tips and tricks to get you started with the main one to remind you of is to shoot all your video in landscape mode.  Here is another blog post of Elise's.

My son got his ATAR results which were amazing and has an early acceptance into the University of Queensland to do the course he wants.  I'm so proud of him and he's going to have a great year and being 18 he is now officially an adult and getting lots more mail as he applies for things like the Electoral roll etc.  As a parent for 18 years it's second nature and hard to "un-parent" at times and both my kids get annoyed when I offer advice on certain things because they are young adults and know stuff.  They both gave me beautiful handmade Christmas Cards with lovely words which means the world to me.

We had a nice Christmas with the weather being 26 degrees and it ended up raining around 1pm.  Christmas in the sub-tropics is generally hot so it was a nice change.  We had our usual prawns, ham, rolls, salads and pudding which was enjoyed by all.  I finally got all the decorations on the tree on the Monday however all the extras and my beautiful silver swag didn't make an appearance this year.  Next year I'll get everything out mid November to enjoy it all however with lots of things going on with end of year graduation, schoolies etc. part time jobs the kids weren't home to decorate when we would normally do it.  There's always next year.  Hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas.  Happy New Year here's to 2022.

Around here - Christmas Lights

What a year it's been and our Christmas Tree is finally decorated.  We popped out to see one of our favourite Streets Christmas Lights this week and took a few photos.  There was a car there completely decorated in Christmas Lights complete with a Christmas Tree on the boot.  It looked so good, completely illegal of course and the owner was in a Santa Suit - in Queensland that means red shorts vs long pants.  Sienna reminded me we had seen this car here a few years back.  Also she said that apparently it's the last year of these lights because of complaints about traffic for this particular Street.  I've seen many Christmas streets over the years and traffic and this isn't one of them.  So sad that simple pleasures comes down to complaining neighbours and given this street has about 8 houses either side of the Street do it every year it's not as if one house in the middle isn't participating.  Enough said I was glad we made it again to one of our favourite streets.

Around here

Wow it's less than two weeks until Christmas and we haven't even got our Christmas Tree up.  Last year we put it up mid November after a crazy 2020 Covid year.  This year we have had other important things on like formals, graduation, schoolies and my sister went on holidays and we normally make an afternoon of it as our family tradition.  Both my kids have part time jobs and social lives so this year we haven't been able to get a time to suit everyone.  Hopefully we'll be putting it up today or tomorrow.  I have a few friends who were in the same boat that we were all late this year for the same reasons as us with the end of the school year and our kids graduating High School it's been a few full on weeks.  I also now have an 18 year old...sounds so weird even saying that however I am a very proud Mum that's for sure.

Preparing for Christmas lunch I will be making this wonderful savory pasta salad which we make at Christmas time.  I also make Chocolate Belgian Slice which was from a Woman's Weekly recipe about 30 years ago.  I make it once a year at Christmas time which is always a treat.  When I first started making it I didn't have a food processor and had to put the biscuits into a brown paper bag and bash it with a rolling pin which was quite difficult to get all the pieces the same.  Now it takes a couple of seconds in the Thermomix and makes a lovely biscuit base.

Here's a recipe to make home made Christmas ornaments which are super easy.  Here's some lovely Christmas Lights we visited in 2019 and some from 2020.

I have been following Gillian Roe from "Tales of a Happy House" for over a year now and her embroidery projects are amazing.  This year she did a "Stitch a Day" of thing in her life.  She has now completed November so take a look at her latest pictures and blog post.   In 2020 she did a "Lockdown Sampler" which you can read about here.  This was her family's trip to New York Sampler which she did before Covid arrived.  This was her earlier Holiday Sampler to France and her Summer Holiday Diary.  The reason I love all of these artworks is they are personal, it reminds her of the holiday and trips and it's also slow crafting so taking time to sit and embroider.  I just love her work and she does beautiful crochet and crafting.

I read this article on Motherhood which I thought was very interesting about how we see ourselves during the day.

We had Billy visiting last week as my friends went on holidays.  He comes every school holidays and he's such a good dog and this is like his second home and he's very comfortable here.

I haven't made any sourdough bread for over a month so refreshed my starter and made a loaf today.  You can read about the master recipe I use here.

Some home grown coriander [cilantro] as a gift for my friend instead of flowers.

Afternoon light in the lounge room.