Despite the Rain

 Well despite all the massive amounts of rain falling here in Queensland, Things have been ticking along ......  The Bees are just loving the pollen from the palms in the back of the garden.  Can't say I'd ever taken that much notice of them except to have to throw away the old seed heads that would fall to the ground along with the palm leaves ...... however once you here the buzzing of the bees you can't help but stop and check it out. 

 We were very blessed to have some old friends drop in and stay overnight with us last week!  It was

wonderful to have that time to be able to catch up on things.  Lyn and I have been snail mailing for quite a few years now ...... I'm thinking we may have started around 2007/2008ish.  Hopefully we can catch up again before too long ........

We managed to get 160ml of rain fall just  a couple of days before we planned to head North.  It's the first time in this house that we've been here and had the heavy rain - so we were able to see just where it flows and now have an idea where we need to place extra drainage. Even though there was plenty of rain, Pete managed to put in a few trenches during the downpour and managed to get it draining out pretty quickly.  I am glad that we were around for it to at least be able to contain things!  A couple of days later we began our drive North.   All up it wasn't too bad a drive ......
We had some heavy downpours early in the trip and were then surprised to find ourselves driving past the areas that had been on fire the other week ...... still slowly burning!

We enjoyed pulling in early afternoon in Mackay for the night (more about that at a later time) ...... and then spent the next morning driving through some more heavy rainfall ....... wondering if we would get cut off or not ......... the roadsigns continued to tell us it was open for the stretches we needed to get through

although at one point the water was close to lapping the road.

It was lovely to finally drive into Townsville where we will enjoy spending

 some quality time with our Son, DIL and grandies who have only just moved into their first every home!  I hope you are all enjoying this week before Christmas ...... I'll catch up with you all again soon!   Hugs, Sharm

Love this new coffee mug from one of my neighbours!

Time is Flying!

Have you looked at the calendar ?  How quickly are the days moving!!!  I'm just getting around to reporting on my end of November OPAM Finishes and here it is ...... we have just 16 days till Christmas!!!!!  I had no finishes in October being part way through numerous projects - but November did see me finish knitting these 2 Cowls ready for Christmas Gifts  for daughter and her partner who live in Melbourne (where they have been having some still cold days!).  It was nice to get something finished!  

Since then things have heated up as we stepped

from November into December ....... there was my online ladies group (a closed group that formed in 2013 when we all did 12WBT for the first time) .... we usually have a christmas decoration swap which is rather fun - but still requires me taking time out to organize and monitor ...........I used a random number generator this year to choose who was giving to whom

I sent this one off to Karen M........

..... mine arrived last week and WOW, I was blown away by the thought attached to this little ornie ....... not only does it remind us of our little Scruffy Boy, but low and behold, Lyn had put his name on the Santa Hat!  Such a special ornament.

And received this one from Lyn C.

Somehow I also managed to get the job of organizing a Secret Santa for some of us at work .... this will be held on Thursday this week so I hope to capture a couple of photos to share.  Thursday is my last day at work before I take a couple of weeks holidays.  Pete and I plan to head up to

Townsville to spend Christmas Day with our Son, DIL and the Grandkids........... 

 So this kind of meant having to work out the gift giving situation and get stuck into things!  It's been a rather frantic couple of weeks whilst I've been doing some crochet and a bit of sewing to wrap up in various gifts.   It was great to have FNWF on This Friday night to link up with Cheryll and others as it gave me that extra boost I needed to pump out a few things .......... 



I mad a start during the day onFriday and continued on various project till today trying to work through my list lol.   I had quite a mess going on in the sewing cave .......

I've managed to get 4 crocheted dishcloths, 1 Trivot and an Apron made up. 

Missed getting a photo of the 4th one that got made up yesterday for our neighbour.

 I'm pretty happy with that as I was wrapping and sorting out gifts in between doing them all lol.  The little Apron is for the granddaughter to put with one of her gifts (a cupcake making kit).

We head off on Saturday and still have quite a few things on the agenda to tick off so its going to

be quite the busy week for sure!  I hope you are all managing to get things ticked off your lists!  I'd love to show you a photo of our Christmas Tree, but alas - no tree being put up this year as I still need to locate the box with all the decorations and given we head off this Saturday and won't be here for Christmas Day, I decided to stress less and not worry ............  instead Pete has been enjoying putting up some Christmas Lights on the Back Deck ......... A bit hard to see in the photo ......

Which encouraged our wonderful neighbours to put up some lights as well .........  we caught up with them last night for a Christmas Celebration as they head off for a cruise on Tuesday and we won't see them till after the Day ......... meantime some friendly competition seems to have sprung up between the guys and they have both enjoyed putting up a few extra christmas lights lol.  Looking forward to seeing them light up later tonight!   I'm off to work on a few more things still on the "To Do" List ..... not totally sure it's getting shorter - perhaps just gets things added as some get crossed off .......hmmmmmm
Big Hugs, 
Sharm