Irving and I had a really lovely extended Winter break. We had our regular classes to attend surrounded by a few excursions, and some interesting extended learning at home, and a trip as a family down to SW Western Australia, to visit Willow and her fiance.
We had our Winter solstice celebration with a fire on the balcony, but sadly no ember baked damper this year, as it had been quite wet overnight, and so having a fire was a last minute decision. We instead had freshly baked home made bread.
We got some last minute tickets to join our home school group, and headed with them to see the Teracotta Warriors at the WA Museum. The whole exhibition was amazing, and the presence of the larger warriors was formidable.
Irving turned 12, and we had a lovely family day celebrating with him, and Willow made him a fabulous birthday cake this year.
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| Blackforest Birthday Cake |
Irving and I learnt about harvesting Aloe Vera, and the need to drain the aloin from the freshly picked leaves to make it edible. It was fascinating finding the sticky yellow substance had drained out after leaving the leaf to strain.
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| Leaves Draining |
We tested and cleaned out this coffee machine, that we found in the hard waste, and discovered that it works, is missing the tamphead, which should be easy enough to replace, and needs a little attention to the finial on the top. So that's part of our next jobs to get it functioning again.
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| DeLonghi coffee machine |
There were lots of toasted marshmallows eaten during our stay with Willow, as they have a woodfire stove and the weather was adequately cold for our visit. When we came back to Perth, it seemed to have finally gotten cold here too! We had a lovely time visiting Manjimup, Busselton, Pemberton, Northcliffe and exploring the SW in general. Particularly on our way home, when we kept making spontaneous stops into small towns along the way.
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| Marshmallows |
We headed to Busselton, found some great shops for tea, healthfood, jewellery- buying a few too many things probably, and then headed to a local jetty for Irving to do some fishing with Willow's fiance.
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| Off to do some fishing |
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| Out on the jetty. |
We got to the Southern Forests Chocolate Company near Pemberton, and had the best chocolate that we've had in WA IMO. They definitely rival our friend, Steven ter Horst in Adelaide (visit to Steven's shop here).
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| Truffle selection |
Arden sadly didn't make the trip with us, as he had a surprise last minute event via airforce cadets, and headed off to a camp for the week. In fact he had quite an eventful lead up to his week away, as he got his learners permit, and he also got a retail job, working for the chain, City Beach.
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| Learning to saw copper. |
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| Irving's left, mine on the right. |
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| My bowl. |
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| Irving's varying square shaped bowls. |
We've been watching a lot of youtube videos to expand our copperwork knowledge, and we found this one particularly interesting and inspiring. We loved that this man had taken up the traditional method of making and repairing old copper pots.
Irving and I have been reading "The Secret Garden". Such a great book, and it's still fascinating to remember having discovered that people back then learnt cursive first if they were educated, and that printing may have been tricky.
We found one of our favourite coffee vans down by our stretch of the river, which was a lovely surprise. They have fabulous Polish pastries.
