I just added some new journal covers to my Etsy store. I made these last weekend from fabric I bought when we were in NSW at the end of October.
I really like the lizard one and the large flower one — they took HOURS to quilt, but it was really satisfying and very meditative doing it, even though my shoulders hurt like crazy afterwards (which means I must’ve been very tense and not breathing as I did the free motion quilting!). Memo to self: Breathe!
Here’s a scary thought – Christmas is just over a month away!
If you’re tired of the Christmas crowds at the malls, seeing the same old (tacky) stuff in the shops, or would like to buy locally made goods and help out your economy, then consider doing your gift shopping online at http://www.etsy.com. Etsy is where artists and craftspeople from around the world sell their handmade goods — everything from art works and photographic prints, to jewellery and clothing accessories, to scented soaps, handmade cards, quilts and so much more in between. Almost everything is unique and not mass produced.
If you have something in mind for a special person, you can search Etsy for what you want, but if you’re stumped for ideas, go to http://www.etsy.com/buy.php and browse the categories that look interesting.
If there’s something you want to buy from any Etsy store, I’d suggest that you place your orders by the end of November to guarantee delivery by Christmas.
Shameless plug: I have an Etsy store where I sell my handmade fabric items (http://RhondaMadeIt.etsy.com). Prices for my items range from $3 to $80, with all bookmarks at $5 each and all luggage tags at $10 each (plus shipping) — great for stocking stuffers!
I drove up to the city on Monday for my consultation with the oral surgeon (see my Expensive date post for why I needed to visit the oral surgeon in the first place). Yes, the tooth has to come out.
The good:
The not so good:
This is only the second stage of the process (the first was the temporary filling done on the day I bit into that date). In some months (after the gum has healed) I need to decide if I want an implant or a bridge. If it’s an implant, that means more surgery; a bridge would be done by my dentist. Whatever I decide means more trips to Perth and a lot more cost.
They say that as you age, your health starts to go. In our case, it’s our teeth! No-one mentions that. BTW, my husband has to return to Perth next Tuesday for his new crown — another trip for him plus an overnight stay.
Maybe the tooth fairy will help with the costs!
How many opportunities do you give a new business to ‘prove’ themselves? I’m about to give a new business in town one more chance.
After receiving their flyer in the letterbox, I called them last week. We made a time for them to come around ‘on Tuesday afternoon’ to assess our garden/landscaping situation (I want fire hazards removed), and to discuss with me what I want done and to give me a quote. I waited, and waited, and waited. At 6:30 PM I called the guy. No response. So I called his wife’s mobile — she answered.
She apologised and then called to her husband (I could hear her side of the conversation). Obviously he had totallyforgotten about the appointment as she said something like ‘You remember? You made the time when we were at so-and-so’s place last week…’ then she must’ve put her hand over the mouthpiece as I didn’t hear any more until she came back on the line to apologise again with the excuse that they’d been helping someone move house today.
She didn’t actually say that he’d completely forgotten about the appointment, but I suspect that’s the case. I was ready to give them quite a bit of work too (other gardening stuff after the fire hazards are dealt with). Now I’m not so sure.
We’ve rescheduled for tomorrow morning ‘after 8:30 AM’. So we’ll see if they turn up. If they don’t, that’s it. They will have lost my business.
Not a good start when you’re trying to build a new business in a new town…
Finally! While we were in NSW, the local fire authorities did a controlled burn of the bush block behind our house.
My local contact reckons it’s been 20+ years since it was burned, based on some of the rubbish they found on the block when they burned it. That’s a BIG fuel load. I feel a little safer now, though if fire gets into the crowns of the trees…
One of my olive fabric items from my Etsy store was just listed in a Greek-themed Etsy Treasury — my 10th! Here’s the link: http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=74792 and here’s a screen shot (Treasuries are only ‘live’ for a few days, so the link won’t work soon).
We were in no hurry to get anywhere today. No arrangements had been made to meet up with my husband’s brothers, despite us leaving our flights till as late as possible on this Sunday.
We had a late, leisurely breakfast at the Sir Stamford, then, because we had to check out of the hotel by 11 am, we decided to head to Sydney Airport where I could check email, read my book, and we could wait for our late afternoon flight in the Qantas Club lounge.
Susan the SatNav couldn’t pick up a satellite signal (too close to the high rise buildings of Sydney’s CBD?), so we stopped and asked a taxi driver for general directions to get to the airport. Once we were clear of the main CBD, Susan located a satellite and got us safely to the airport. I had rebooted her several times, but she just couldn’t link in to a satellite. Not very good if you need a SatNav to find your way around a city’s CBD!
Dropping off the car was a painless experience and took minutes, unlike the runaround we had in getting it in the first place. We checked in, were offered seats on the midday flight to Perth (which we refused as we had people meeting us and it would upset their plans for the day), then went through security and into the Qantas Club. Where we sat for about 6 hours…
I took advantage of some of the time to clear some 400 or so of my 650+ emails (that’s what a week away will do to you!), while my husband watched aircraft loading and unloading procedures…
Massive A380 being taken somewhere
The flight back to Perth was uneventful and on time. Dinner was a quite spicy lamb curry, with rice, peas and dhal, cheese and crackers, red wine, bread roll and butter, Toblerone chocolate, water, soft drinks, more red wine… and later an ice-cream. Even though it was dinner, it was more like lunch for us with the time zone changes.
We arrived at 6:45 pm and our friends picked us up and drove us to one of their local Chinese restaurants where we had dinner. It as lovely to see them both again and to have the opportunity to thank them for providing us with secure parking for our car and their ‘taxi’ service from the airport.
We stayed overnight at the Crowne Plaza on Terrace Rd, Perth ($168/night), as we have dental and medical specialist appointments scheduled for tomorrow.
The reason for our trip to NSW and Sydney was the wedding of my husband’s niece, to be held on a function boat on Sydney Harbour, and leaving from the Sydney Opera House steps.
We started off with a leisurely fully cooked breakfast at the Sir Stamford (part of the room deal). The only complaint was that the tables were too high for the chairs — all part of that ostentatious French decor, but not very practical!
After breakfast we got a call from one of the brothers suggesting meeting up at a pub in The Rocks for lunch. It wasn’t far to walk, so we left the car in the parking garage and hoofed it over there. There were lots of people about on Circular Quay and in The Rocks, and a big cruise ship, the ‘Amsterdam’, was in port. It was a gorgeous day.
We joined the brothers and the groom-to-be but decided not to have lunch — we’d been overeating all week, and had had a late (big) breakfast, and we knew there’d be food at the wedding later this afternoon/evening.
The wedding guests were to meet at the Man’o’War steps at the Sydney Opera House at 5 pm, for a 5:30 departure on ‘The Pontoon’, a glass-enclosed function boat. We walked down from the hotel (5 minutes away), and waited and waited and waited. Eventually we got on board and left the wharf around 6 pm. My feet were hurting from wearing heels and walking on paving, and standing up for so long! There was even more standing while canapes were served outside on the top deck, and as we motored to the steps near the Park Hyatt at Circular Quay to pick up the bride and her father. Then it was back to Farm Cove where the wedding ceremony took place on the top deck of the boat, with the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and the city in the background. It was very windy, so the symbolic candles couldn’t be lit.
Iconic backdrop for a Sydney Harbour wedding
There was a lot more standing around until we were asked to move downstairs to the main level for the dinner. By this time it was close to 8 pm and my feet were killing me, even though the heels I had on were reasonably low.
Downstairs on 'The Pontoon'
Dinner was two courses, plus cheese and fruit platters, and coffee. There were two dishes per course and they were served alternately — person A got dish A, person B got dish B, person C got dish A, person D got dish B, etc. There’s a name for this style of catering, but I’ve forgotten what it is. You could swap with your neighbour if you didn’t want what was put in front of you. The entree courses were a goat cheese and onion tart or a ‘wild mushroom risotto with truffle oil infusion and grated parmesan’. I had the risotto — it was yummy! For the main course, the dishes were ‘aged porterhouse steak’ or a chicken dish. I had the steak. And it was aged all right — it was tough as old boots! Our dinner knives had no serration on them at all (what’s up with that??), though I’m not sure it would have made any difference. Pushing hard, it took me 33 slices to cut through each piece of the steak, and then 140 chews to break it up enough to swallow (I counted it ‘cos it was taking SOOOOOO long). That steak was very tough and I left half of the small portion I’d been served. Others at the table left some of theirs too, so it wasn’t just mine that was tough.
Miniscule portion of incredibly tough steak
The wines were from Hardy’s but I didn’t see which label. I had two glasses of the red to try to wash down the tough steak. And that was all the alcohol I had the whole wedding.
A few speeches were given between the courses, and once the dancing started, my husband and I retreated upstairs to take in the lights of Sydney at night. A few others did the same — mostly the smokers (I was surprised by how many were smokers). It was still pretty windy, but the air on our faces was better than the stuffy air downstairs. And going under the Harbour Bridge was neat!
We got back to the Opera House steps around 11:30 pm. Just before we landed, a Venetian-style water taxi came to pick up the bride and groom and ferry them off to wherever.
We said our goodbyes, and walked back to the hotel — well, I hobbled as my feet weren’t coping well!
It was a lovely ceremony and a delightful and beautiful setting, spoiled by three things — sore feet (my fault for choosing the shoes I did and not realising we’d be standing for some hours); very tough steak; and the incredibly steep, narrow and downright dangerous stairs that led down to the toilets. Those stairs were a real problem, even for those of us who were sober. In fact, I overheard a couple of ladies say, very early in the evening after they’d come down the stairs for the first time, that they wouldn’t be drinking as they wouldn’t want to negotiate those stairs under the influence of alcohol and in their (very) high heels. I have no idea how the boat catered for anyone who was a little infirm or wobbly on their feet — these seemed to be the only toilets.
We weren’t in a hurry to get into Sydney. We had plenty of time — check in at the hotel wasn’t until 3:00 PM and we were only a couple of hours out. I decided to go to the Cessnock Public Library about two streets away to check and delete the avalanche of emails I knew would be piling up. But the library was closed — it was the annual picnic day for the Council workers! Just my luck…
We drove back to Sydney the long way — via Kurri Kurri, Newcastle, Belmont (where we stopped at a patchwork fabric store!), then meandered down the coast through The Entrance (where we had lunch) to Woy Woy, then we cut back in to Gosford and on into Sydney.
The foreshore at The Entrance is very like the foreshores at Rockingham and Mandurah in Western Australia. Lots of picnic tables, grassed areas for families, cafes, etc. We grabbed a delicious chicken kebab each from the kebab shop on the corner and ate it at a picnic table under a tree. The weather was gorgeous.
The drive down the coast and through the little towns was very picturesque, but I’d live in dread of the bushfire danger lurking in the steep, well-wooded hillsides where lots of houses are built.
Susan the Navigator had some trouble getting us back on to the Pacific Highway — we wanted to go one way; she wanted us to go another. We stopped listening to her and did it ourselves! Once on the Pacific Highway, we had a dream run into the outskirts of Sydney. The road through Ku-ring-gai National Park is great — wide, smooth, with nicely flowing traffic. Then we hit the suburbs. The Highway takes you through a lot of suburbs, with lots of traffic, cars parked on the side of the road, short merging lanes, etc. It’s possible that we could have avoided all this, but we don’t know ‘cos I made a boo-boo with Susan!
The hotel where we were staying for the wedding tomorrow was the Sir Stamford Hotel at 93 Macquarie St, Sydney (http://www.stamford.com.au/) — opposite the Botanic Gardens and right near the Opera House and Circular Quay in the heart of Sydney. I entered ’93 Macquarie St, Sydney’ into Susan, and she took us there. Only it was 93 Macquarie St in some leafy suburb north of Sydney! “You have arrived at your destination” was interesting when we were looking at a house instead of a hotel near the Opera House! Then I found out that Susan had a city selection option for ‘Sydney’ and ‘Sydney CBD’. My error. When I selected ‘Sydney CBD’ then put in 93 Macquarie St, she got us back on course and delivered us over the Harbour Bridge and along the Cahill Expressway right to the hotel door. Too funny!
The Sir Stamford is a very classy hotel, but with all this ornate, over the top 18th Century French style decoration that doesn’t do a thing for me. It’s also pretty expensive (we had a group rate of $274 a night which included full breakfast for two each morning, but didn’t include parking at $35 a day). Our room was really big, with a HUGE all-marble bathroom.
We decided to see if there was anywhere close by to eat (other than the hotel), so we walked down to the Opera House (a 5-minute meander), then along Circular Quay to the Overseas Passenger Terminal. There were HEAPS of places to eat! We had that extra bottle of Zinfandel from Piggs Peake Winery that we couldn’t take on the plane with us, so we were looking for a restaurant/cafe that looked reasonable, but that also allowed BYO. With corkage of $15 per bottle at some places, it all looked too hard. Also, the area was very busy and noisy, with lots of crowds enjoying the warm weather the views and the ‘breeze’ off the harbour at the end of the working week. My husband was not fussed about the crowds, so we headed back to the hotel to cool off. We decided to get room service so we could drink the bottle of wine with our meal, in the quiet comfort of our room. The steak sandwiches from room service were excellent, and the Zin went down really well with them! It was a good decision.
The bed was really comfy, as were the pillows.
As an aside: It always amazes me that the more you pay for a hotel room in Australia and the US, the less of the basics you get. For example, the range of TV channels at the Sir Stamford was limited at best and they charged for all movies — they didn’t even have one of the Foxtel movie channels. All of the cheaper places we stayed on this trip had a much bigger range of TV channels. And expensive hotels charge an arm and a leg for internet connection — not that it mattered to me this time as I didn’t have my laptop. They may have fancy restaurants and gyms and special club facilities, but that means diddly at 10 PM when you’re not yet ready for sleep and just want to watch a bit of TV.
King bed at the Sir Stamford Hotel
It was winery day today! Hunter Valley is famous for its reds, especially Shiraz. And guess what our favourite wine variety is? Shiraz! Heaven.
Wyndham Estate (http://www.wyndhamestate.com), an old well-established winery at the top end of the Lower Hunter region:
Tyrrell’s Vineyard (http://www.tyrrells.com.au), another old, well-established winery. Overall, Tyrrell’s was very disappointing. We tried three shirazes, but as the old blokes behind the counter were just going through the motions of ‘customer service’, we got no information about the wines. It’s as though they didn’t care.
View from Tyrrell's carpark
Brokenwood (http://www.brokenwood.com.au) had a young girl behind the counter who had heaps of personality but I got the impression she didn’t know a lot about wine.
Pepper Tree Wines (http://www.peppertreewines.com.au) had the very personable and knowledgeable Craig behind the counter. He knew his stuff and he also recommended a couple of other wineries to try as well as a place for lunch (Bistro Molines). The current Hunter Valley tourist guide book said Pepper Tree made Zinfandel, but Craig said they stopped making it a couple of years ago — he referred us to Piggs Peake for Zinfandel, and to McWilliams Mt Pleasant for some other good shirazes. Thanks Craig!
After Pepper Tree, we followed Craig’s lunch recommendation and went to Bistro Molines (http://www.bistromolines.com.au), which is located off the beaten track at Tallavera Grove Winery (http://www.tallaveragrove.com.au). I expected ‘bistro’ to mean decent food at a decent price, nothing too fancy. Bistro Molines is very far removed from all of those things. It’s very fancy (we felt a little out of place in our jeans and T-shirts…), very expensive (lunch main courses were around $40 each, and entrees were $25 and up; wines by the glass started at $8), and while the food was delicious, it was a dining experience best suited for the evening. My husband had the twice-roasted duckling, and I had most excellent fig, gorgonzola and proscuitto entree. But it was an expensive lunch and we felt a little out of place among the other diners in their designer clothes and cars!
View from Bistro Molines
Piggs Peake Winery (http://www.piggspeake.com) was next on the list. We had to backtrack a bit to get to it, but it was worth it! The wines were expensive, but they were all magnificent. These guys were the only ones who don’t charge for freight anywhere in Australia. We ordered a mixed case (and got an extra bottle of Zin thrown in) and it arrived home a week after we ordered it, with all bottles individually wrapped in bubble wrap.
McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant (http://www.mountpleasantwines.com.au) was our last stop. They are another old winery, with a HUGE tasting room. No-one was serving when we got there, but the maintenance guy spotted us and came and served us! That was nice! He knew something about the wines too, even though he had some beers in his hands to take out to his workers at the end of the day. Later on the guy who’s normally behind the counter came in and took over from him. Lots of light-hearted banter!
And after all those wines, it was time to call it a day!
On the way back into Cessnock, we called into Potters Brewery (http://www.pottersbrewery.com.au/) — after all that wine, my husband said he felt like a beer! He had a tasting plate of their boutique beers, while I had a Diet Coke in keeping with my alcohol-free day.
Dinner that night was at the Cessnock SSS BBQ Barn (http://www.sssbbq.com.au), where we had the same as we’d had two nights ago in Dubbo — a large rack of ribs for him and a small rack for me. He must’ve had more than usual to drink as he also ordered a Chocolate Mud Pudding for dessert — and he never has dessert!
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 