Yamba

Mid week we drove to Yamba (about 1 1/4 hours from where we live) to visit my husband's parents. Here's a little about Yamba http://www.yambansw.com.au/main.html 

"There are two theories as to the meaning of Yamba, one being that it is the local Aboriginal word for "headland". However, J.S. Ryan, following R.L. Dawson's early 'Recollections and Records of the Clarence Aborigines', believes the most likely derivation is an Aboriginal word 'yumbah' meaning a rough edible shellfish the size of a man's hand that clings to rocks and is similar to an oyster."

Driving past the sugarcane fields

We drove through Maclean - an area that is well known for growing sugar-cane. The sugarcane fires at night can be spectacular!! 

The mighty Clarence River

We watched the Anzac Day rugby league match http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/rugby-league/league-news/roosters-vs-dragons-anzac-day-match-20130425-2ih05.html My hubby goes for the St George Dragons and was a little sad they lost :-(

Indulging in some ANZAC biscuits

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/536/giant+anzac+biscuits#  Here is the recipe for anyone interested - they are yummy!!

The war veterans parade before the match

Some St George players

The next day we drove down to Yamba Beach and had morning tea at Pippie's cafe.  

Waffles - yum!!

 Then checked out the memorial and cenotaph for local soldiers who went to war. Seeing the old men who fought in the war and what they must have gone through always brings a tear to my eye.

Overlooking the baths and beach

"Lest We Forget" memorial

Cenotaph

On our way home we stopped into a fish shop as hubby is going fishing for blackfish tomorrow in Urunga. The marina is beautiful with all the boats and we saw some egrets and pelicans. 

                                     

                                                 

I also got to purchase some craft books - sweet!!

Now Riki is helping me finish off some crafts for a swap!! Hope everyone is having a as great a weekend as we are!!

Little Bit of Live Music :-)

Friends of ours invited us to a live music concert - Grinspoon - and I got all excited when I saw who the support band was - Kingswood. Grinspoon is an Australian band who have been around for ages, here's a bit of a blurb from Wikipedia

"Grinspoon is an Australian rock band from Lismore, New South Wales formed in 1995 and fronted by Phil Jamieson on vocals and guitar with Pat Davern on guitar, Joe Hansen on bass guitar and Kristian Hopes on drums. Also in 1995, they won the Triple J-sponsored Unearthed competition for Lismore, with their post-grunge song "Sickfest". 

Grinspoon changed their sound to more mainstream rock by their 2002 album, New Detention, gaining fans and peaking at No. 2 on the ARIA Albums Charts; similarly 2007's Alibis & Other Lies also reached No. 2. Their 2004 album, Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills, which peaked at No. 4, won the2005 'Best Rock Album Award' at the ARIA Music Awards.

The band was signed to Universal Records in United States by late 1998, they were promoted by the songs "Champion", which featured in Gran Turismo 3; "Post Enebriated Anxiety", which was on the international version of Guide to Better Living; "Chemical Heart", via the internet; and a cover of the Prong song "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck", from Grinspoon's Pushing Buttons EP, which was included on ECW: Extreme Music."

Here's a clip

But the highlight for me was Kingswood - the lead singer does the best vocals!!

http://www.triplejunearthed.com/KINGSWOOD 

This is the link to the Triple J Unearthed website where you can download new artist music for free :-) But I also purchased their EP on iTunes this morning - sweet!!

Blurb from their website:
KINGSWOOD are a four-piece indie rock outfit from Melbourne Australia consisting of Fergus Linacre (lead vocals), Alex Laska (lead guitar & backing vocals), Jeremy Hunter (bass & vocals) and Justin Debrincat (drums & backing vocals).
After touring Australia in their own right and with such acts as The Living End, British India and The Saints, numerous festival appearances such as Splendour In The Grass, Queenscliff Music Festival and Pyramid Rock, and releasing 3 killer singles "Yeah Go Die", "Medusa" and "She's My Baby", 2012 has been a massive year for KINGSWOOD.
Don't miss your opportunity to experience one of Australia's hottest acts live.

Here's some Kingswood clips :-)

We started off by trying to find a place to eat. We tried Cafe Fiasco for pizza but they were fully booked. Walked by a whale sculpture fountain down by the Jetty on our way - we have awesome whale watching. Humpback whales cruise past Coffs Coast on their way north in early winter and, after giving birth, the whales and their calves make their way back south in spring.

We then settled on a Vietnamese restaurant - I had Xào tỏi with chicken and coriander (stir fry) and my hubby had Pork Om sữa (where ingredients are cooked in and eaten from a clay pot - it's the brown clay pot behind Riki)

Then onto Cold Rock Ice creamery - where we shared a mango sorbet with a Bounty bar (chocolate covered coconut) smashed in with it - yum!!

Then onto the gig - we'd missed the first support act - Emporers - but where there just in time for Kingswood - woot!! My favourite song's are She's My Baby, Ohio, Medusa and their cover of First Aid Kits "Wolf". Then a break and Grinspoon came on - the crowd got a bit crazy so I stood up the back with hubby and got a few awful pictures

We had left our puppies inside as it's getting cold for winter. We found they had no trouble entertaining themselves by trying to get into a peanut butter jar and a skim milk carton :-( Could of been worse!

Wasn't me?!?

Yummy breakfast of bacon, eggs, olive batard and brewed coffee!!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend :-)

All things Woolgoolga

Okay- time for a bit of catch-up :-)

Well - during the week I had 3 days of professional development for work at a lovely resort close to Coffs Harbour. Whilst we waited around for dinner one night we played some mini golf and walked along Sapphire Beach (it didn't get it's name from an over-abundance of sapphires on it's shores :-()

Then the Woolgoolga Curryfest 2013 was on (http://www.curryfest.com.au/) - Woolgoolga has a large Sikh community and in 2006 they decided to showcase this facet of our community through a festival. On Friday night a friend and I went to see an outdoor movie called 'Monsoon Wedding' (equal parts humorous and dramatic) and we're glad that it didn't rain. We bought a mixed plate of chicken and lamb curry with a samosa - yum!! Unfortunately I only had my phone which takes crappy photos so no pictures :-(

On the Saturday we took a quick trip through the Curryfest markets during our weekend trip to the butcher's. Lots of Indian clothes, jewellery and accessories. Rain was still threatening!!

My sister and her family arrived shortly after this and spent the night visiting. Today the sun came out so we decided to make the most of it - a trip into Woolgoolga again for seafood and a walk along the beach - beautiful. Coffee afterwards at the Beachhouse Cafe.

 You can't see behind the plant but the sign says White Salt - where we get yummy seafood and thick cut chips!

Phew!! Can't wait to see what we get up to this week.

Some things coming up soon are

• ANZAC Day 26th April - where we have a dawn service for all soldiers past and present who have served our country in war
• Rotary second-hand book fair - ANZAC day long weekend May 11th-18th

Here's to all the LV's out there having a fantastic time :-)

Riki's here!!!!!!

Riki arrived today safe and sound - yeahhhhhh

She was relieved to be out of her wrappings and very pleased she had resisted the urge to eat the sweets that were in with her!! She helped me out a bit for some crafting I am doing as well. Can't wait to get out and about and see some of the Australian coast with her.

The anxoius wait......

I am picturing Riki in an aeroplane jetting her way to Australia - she is a well seasoned traveller so I am sure she is having a great time.
I decided to do a test to see if I can use this blog properly to catalogue Riki's adventures when she arrives :-)  I am a blogging newbie :-) I will be hosting Riki for the next 6 months on the east coast of Australia  - a little place called Coffs Harbour!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffs_Harbour
Today daylight saving finished so we gained an hour of time (instead of 6pm its 5pm) - this is definitely a sign that winter is approaching. Here is our little piece of the coast!!

Djurgården

Djurgården is a part of Stockholm situated on an island. It's well known for all the touristy places, museums and the like. My parents visited us on the way back home after their vacation, and luckily we also had a day off. Sightseeing time! We were going to look at an exhebition at Liljevalchs that I'd heard a lot of good things about. It's all about the art of hand crafting, or "Hemslöjd" as it's called in swedish.

Here's a map of Djurgården.

A fun thing about public transportation in Stockholm is that the bus cards work on ferries too (not only for busses and trains). And since we were going to an island we decided to use the Djurgård ferry. It's a walk-on ferry and it's usually packed with people since it arrives next to the amusement park Gröna Lund. As we drew closer to the harbour we could hear the excited screams from the various rides.

On the ferry, watching Gröna Lund

Liljevalchs was every bit as fun as I hoped, especially the main part of the exhibition: thousands of leafs crafted by people all over Sweden. Any technique you can think of - I saw it. Knitting, crochet, woodworking, paper, metal, cheramics, mixed media... I even saw a leaf featuring bee wax.

All the crafts...

And also: Riki is now famous! There was a public embroidery project as part of the exhibition. A huge tablecloth anyone could help embroider. I just had to put Riki on it, and I'm pretty pleased. I'm not very used to embroidery but I managed a deacent likeness, don't you think?

Riki, meet Riki (yes, I put her name on there too)

Coast to coast

I know Riki isn't used to the ocean, so it's lucky there's a lot of coastline to visit in Sweden. For the first part of our summer vacation we went to the west coast (the only one with real ocean according to my husband). The weather was so-so, but she did see some water that didn't rain down too... She checked out a small light house near the boat club where my parents in law keep their boat. Due to the weather and hubby's tendency for seasickness, we never took the boat out. Riki did get to travel by ferry, however.

We managed to snag a cache while waiting for the ferry, but strangely enough no one but me wanted to stop and get the one on the other side...

There's the ferry! We need to get back to the car again...

Many of the pictures are from a trip to a small coastal village called Fiskebäckskil. We had a delicious meal and watched the plethora of sailboats just outside the restaurant. I usually don't take photos of food, but the dessert was very pretty so I had to ;) On the way back we took the ferry to the bigger village Lysekil and drove home that way.

Dessert!

The sailboats outside.

There are lots of fjords along the coast of Bohuslän. This is the view from a cache we searched for.

Princesstårta

Fika! And fika outside nonetheless.

Riki's travels have taken her to the west coast of Sweden. We're currently in Munkedal, far enough from the coast to escape most of the Midsummer madness. My parents in law live here and this is where we will spend the first part of our vacation.

I've told you about fika before... Here comes another very Swedish habit. Eating princess-cake for fika. Any holiday deserves a princesstårta in matching colours. The traditional one is dome shaped, covered in green marzipan and with a pink rose on top.

As you can see they also come in log shape, and in many colours. This was disappointingly enough made with sugarpaste... I'm not crazy about princesstårta, but it's tasty once in a while. One of the bakers at work told me about the cake craze this fall when they were cranking out pumpkin coloured cakes as fast as they could for halloween.

Hopefully we will not get the traditional rainy Midsummer this year, but it looks bleak... We had awesome summer weather today at least, so I'm happy.

Princess-cake behind the danish pastries.

Distracted by yarn... This is going to be a shawl once I wind it all. All 800 meters of it...

Mmmmmm... Lavender

I'm not feeling sorry about working the weekend anymore. My days off this week are monday and tuesday plus next weekend, and what a lovely monday it is! In between some much needed cleaning and tidying up I'm relaxing on the balcony. Riki is enjoying the scent of lavender. It refuses to bloom but smells lovely when you touch it.

Lavender. And some pots that might yet sprout something.

Our balcony

Eurovision Song Contest

I think most people in Sweden care one way or another. I'm old enough to admit I do :) After a lovely birthday party for my two year old niece I decided to stay and watch the show with my family. We're watching and cheering for Loreen in the voting.

The little things

I've had a few bad weeks lately, mainly because of too much stress. Riki have helped me recover by dragging me out for walks and cache hunts. Oh, and she's helped with everyday things... I've had tons of free time since my doctor told me I should stay at home from work, at least for a while, but not very much energy. It's good to have a bored E.Coli at home. I need to do some things and entertain my guest!

Monday is needle day. Ugh... I had good company however.

Monday night fun... Well, at least I had good company. Every other week it's two needles, and the other weeks it's just one.

Aww... Look who helped me! Riki and my wolverine/sharps container. 

I did some fun things earlier on monday too. Riki helped me find a mystery that I had been puzzling over for a while. There are caches that contain clues in the area and when I had finally found the last one (and found a less than helpful clue) I decided to see what I had so far. It's been fun, since I needed to find out trivia about my newhometown, or part of town. I had to guess one of the numbers for the cordinates so I had two possible places to look. After a lot of walking because of muggles and some strength and stubbornness we found it!



Finally! We found a mystery and Riki helped herself to a gold medal. She also signed the logbook of course.

Today I went back to the doctor and he told me to stay home one more week, but that he thought I could go back to work after that. I think so too and it feels good. A friend kept me company today and we decided to go release some books. There's a cafe in a nearby shopping centre that has a bookshelf with free books so we put the books among them. The regular catch rate (ie. the books you ever hear from again) is about 10% and free bookshelves isn't my "luckiest" location, but I'm sure they will be read and enjoyed even if I never hear about it. After lunch and sneaky book release we decided to walk home from cache to cache. The first one was near a playground.

Riki trying her luck as a captain. The theme of the playground was "everyday heroes" like fire fighters, police, sea rescue service etc.

Interesting swing thing... The top part moves so it works almost as a cross between a swing, a seesaw and a merry-go-round.

We actually found all three caches we were looking for, and we got to see a really neat playground and a beautiful park in the process. This next picture is a weird tree from the park.

Three trees in one!

Burgers and barbecue

We really needed to get out of the house yesterday, and we also needed some kind of curtain to give us a bit more shade in the living room and to make it darker in the bedroom. To the hardware store! After deciding on a few different roll down curtains in record time Gustav wanted to take a look at the selection of grills and barbecues. He's plotting an outdoor kitchen on the upstairs balcony... The ones at the hardware store were pretty overpriced so we just looked. Riki found a ridiculously pink one =D

Hubby is dreaming of a barbecue... But perhaps not this one.

After a trip to two different electronic stores that were out of iPads we needed food. I had a plan that involved food, some sightseeing and caching... The Vega grill! We tried their sambal burger, a homemade burger with a bit of spice to it. It was topped with béarnaise sauce and dried onion. Perfectly toasted bun... *droool*

A fun feature was a cabinet with commemorative plates with the names and amount of burgers eaten by the record keepers. I'm far from that gang since I couldn't even finish my one burger.

I've visited the same cache earlier, but I couldn't find it back then. Clever camouflage fooled me last time, but yesterday I spotted part of the mechanism that it hung from so it wasn't hard at all. When I grabbed the cache to log it a woodpecker landed in a tree above. It sat there pecking the whole time, not minding us at all. Log entry with a picture of Riki.

Bad picture of the Vega grill. The first drive in fast food restaurant in Sweden that served hamburgers (or flat meatballs as they were called at first)