Dogs on the beach

Freya watching Steve…

Scarlett, Purdy’s back end and Tess…

Freya and her new favourite toy…

The day after … Boxing Day food and other bits

This is lunch today, after being at the beach early for a swim, mucking around on the beach with Freya, and catching up with doggy friends … sweet and hot pineapple and prawn curry.

The original recipe is here, but I changed it a bit to use what I had – left-over cooked prawns (so they only needed to be heated through), lemon juice instead of lime, lemongrass from a jar and quarter the quantities, served with boiled basmati and wild rice. It’s delicious!

Christmas was great – peaceful and fun, but I missed Maddy. We talked to her a few times, and she was having a great time with friends, but misses the warm, beach Christmases that we always have here. A white Christmas just seems weird when I think about it, but I guess aussies are conditioned to accepting snow and images of roaring fires, etc, thanks to our generic colonial heritage.

I’m definitely on holidays and have fallen willingly into a lovely rhythym of waking early, taking Freya to the beach for a swim, and having a “nana-nap” on the couch in the afternoon sometime.

The Sydney-Hobart yacht race has started, I haven’t had a work-related phone call since Christmas Eve, and all is right with the world :*)

Merry Christmas, everyone.

What I’m doing on my holidays…

… and I have three whole weeks off!!!

It looks like Mondays will still involve work, though. Despite three years of the merged departments, one of my staff can’t get his head around the regular Monday morning updates on one of the websites, so I had an urgent call in the supermarket yesterday and hurried home to upload some documents. Irritating, but it points out some of the bits I’ll have to leave very, very simple instructions about when I head off next year.

First things first – we’ve been heading down to South Beach every morning. I’ve been taking Freya down in the mornings before work for a month or so, now that it’s light earlier. Now, though, we go and swim and can stay until it gets too warm. This morning there were dolphins at the top dog beach, playing quite happily in between the swimmers between the two groynes. Just heaven :*) I wish I’d taken my camera, but here’s Freya a couple of weeks ago…

Other than the beach and gardening, I’ve been sewing. First off is a cot quilt for Red’s housemate’s baby (not due for ages yet, but we’re all very excited).

I haven’t made a quilt by machine before, but I could be a convert – it’s very quick!

It didn’t quite seem finished, though, so I copied one of the bees from the backing fabric onto one of the plainer squares on the front and embroidered it.

It’ll be a very quiet Christmas with the miniberk in the UK – just Red, Pete and myself (and Freya, of course!).

The pommie git has been quiet, but I think he knows how much I am thinking of him. Wish you could be here, Mr Dombrowski xxx

Missing the berk

Just missing him.

Bugger.

Wish he’d been here to see this – first waterlily has opened.