News & Updates from Vicki Avcin ~ AusCrafts · Page 28

Last Monday my daughter, along with her brother and family, daughters partner and partners parents and myself went to a night at the Enchanted Garden at Roma St, Parklands in Brisbane.

This is Brisbanes annual immersive light and sound spectacular which returns to share the Parklands nocturnal secrets in a dazzling celebration of nature from 25 November to 21 December 2022This years Enchanted Garden showcases Roma Street Parklands smallest resident – the Eastern Water Dragon.By day, the Dragons guard and protect the park and its visitors.

By night, these Guardians of the Park transform into their true magical selves, taking on the colours and characteristics of the parks natural elements: water, trees, rocks and flowers.The Guardians appear as giant holograms, revealing the secrets and stories of The Enchanted Garden as visitors explore the stunning illuminated and immersive experience.

The four Guardians then unite in a spectacular Shadow Sculpture in a fitting finaleThroughout the walk (approx 1klm) featured the wonderful giant holograms each with water dragons which appeared at several places and were so brilliant that the first one I really thought there were three water dragons sitting on the rocks.

Wasnt until I got to the second one that it actually clicked that they were holograms. The lighting and projections were equally as wonderful. It really was a magical night made even better by wonderful family to do it with.

I would like to wish everyone a safe and peaceful Christmas and New Year and Thank you to all the customers that have purchased my designs over the past year.

I used to never imagine eating Sushi. Raw fish just never did it for me until my daughter took me to a Sushi Train assuring me that not everything was raw.

Well I loved it and whenever Id come down for a holiday it was a definite must that we went again.

Now we are in Brisbane there are a lot of sushi places around and we are lucky that we have one place in the local shopping centre around the corner from where we live and Fridays after shopping its always sushi for lunch now.

Ive wanted to learn how to make it myself…… it cant be that hard! Well the grand daughter makes it often and said shed teach me. So I bought a Sushi Kit that included the sushi rice, the seaweed sheets, rolling mat and some flavourings.

Well I didnt know there was special rice, so just as well I didnt try and use normal rice…… must have sticky rice. (Sticky is an understatement!).

So first night I tipped all the rice in to cook, big mistake. I had enough to feed half the country I think. Anyway, following the directions I got to putting it all together, rolled it and well it didnt really look like it should.

I had chicken in that lot. Still had a pile of rice left so next day had another go with tuna in it which turned out a little more like it should but far from perfect.

So Wednesday night for dinner I decided Id have another go.

This time with salmon and avocado and quite proud of myself as it pretty much looked the part and didnt all fall to bits trying to eat it.

So practice will make perfect one day, in the meantime Im enjoying being able to have sushi whenever I want now, not just Friday lunches.

The first three rooms in our house Renos are all but finished! Three bedrooms are now complete apart from floor coverings.

We wont be doing the floors as we are having carpet in bedrooms but as we still have to strip walls and ceilings out in the rest of the place, weve decided until the whole house is stripped, replaced and plastered and painted (done with airless sprayer),just going by the amount of dust from those rooms alone, the dust will find every nook and crevice and get into the carpet.

Trying to seal off the rest of the place while doing those rooms helped but we were finding dust in everything.

It has taken us nearly 6 months to do these 3 rooms as it has just been my hubby and myself mostly although we did have help from the kids to put the plaster up and they also helped do the first coat of paint on the walls when they had time.

So our next dilemma is deciding where to start doing next.

Kitchen is a total gut job and there is a butlers pantry to be built off that, our Bedroom needs ceilings replaced, the ensuite off our bedroom is a total gut job, and every ceiling sheet needs to be replaced in the rest of the house, so trying to figure out where to start next is fun…….not.

But we are excited to have completed those rooms now and feel like weve actually achieved something. The photos are Real Estate photos, during and complete (Holey room is getting curtains put up as I write this).

Well Mother Nature really is going through menopause I think. After a bitterly (and in places record breaking) cold winter and spring, above average rain during the winter and spring, we had a few lovely spring days at the end of November.

Yayyyy summer is coming.

Well today the 1st December is the first day of summer…. Or so we thought. Forget that, weve just had our coldest December day for a long long time, in fact it looks like being a record.

The temperature struggled to get to 17 deg C and it was rainy and very windy.

Had to go dig the winter trackpants and jumper out and even then with the wind, if I went outside I had to pull the dressing gown on as well!

We are supposed to have more of the same tomorrow with temperatures not getting back to summer temps till Tuesday next week.

So Mother Nature is sure messed up. Some places people even had heaters going today.

Weve cleaned the fire place out and will do our best to stay out of the wind and inside and keep warm because having a fire in summer somehow just isnt right.

The photo is of our resident frog that lives out the front of the house, and weve discovered it has a friend about the same size too.

Just not sure where its hiding yet.

Well actually hes a new grandfurbaby. His name is Arlo and he arrived at the kids place last week. He was an early Christmas present for the family and is a golden retriever.

After the passing of Milo their chocolate Labrador last year there was a big void in their lives and although Milo will never be forgotten, the family had lots of love still waiting to be given.

He is the cutest little fellow and already getting into lots of mischief. We met him a couple of days ago and he instantly took to us and didnt mind lots and lots of cuddles.

He already knows how to get nice and muddy after he discovered a big puddle of water after recent rain…… took to the water like a dog in the mud!

He will have many more cuddles to come and we look forward to having many many years of loving with him.