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July was busy!!

For my 40th birthday we rented out Pickleholic and invited every single one of my friends to come and play pickleball. So many different groups all made an effort to come and it made me feel very special. We had tons of family, including the Lonards who came up from Sydney, work friends, weightlifting friends, pickleball friends, Discord friends, board game friends, old friends, and new friends.

Unfortunately I only remembered to take two photos on the day.

Almost everyone had a try at some point!! Love it!!

We got banh mi delivered in and had tons of snacks as well. And a Costco cake. Scott made a speech, and I disassociated while they sang Happy Birthday to me. Please do not perceive me. :P

Overall I had a blast and felt very spoiled and I hope everyone else had fun too. A good start to my 40s.

The next day we celebrated Luca’s birthday in Boronia. The kids smashed the pinata that we forgot to do at the party. It’s probably a good thing we forgot to do it at Pickleholic because the pinata was very durable and the candy got a bit pulverized and made a huge mess.

The fam went to watch Scott at hockey. It was fun to see him play and see how much he’s improved since the last time I went, but everyone’s favourite part of the game was when he got a penalty and had to sit in the penalty box.

We did some dogsitting while Priscilla went to Adelaide. This is Fanta. She spends most of her day lying down on the floor or the couch. A very chill doggy. She has pyjamas! I am not really a dog person but I didn’t mind this dog. In fact I did feel quite sad after she got picked up.

Quest For El Dorado
Everdell Silverfrost

I got a bunch of new board games for my birthday! The Quest For El Dorado is right up my alley as it is relatively simple but can get strategic! I also like that it is El Dorado when that’s where we used to live in Vancouver. And Everdell Silverfrost is great as well, as I always sort of thought that the original Everdell was a bit too simple, and this version adds a bunch of chaos elements that make every game slightly different. We still have a couple more new games to try as well!

I attempted to make a red velvet cake for Ash’s birthday but accidentally added BLACK food colouring instead of red!! It came out a really appetizing shade of swampy green. But it tasted great and was still probably my most successful layer cake ever. We won at trivia that night too so overall that was a great evening.

This year we decided to make a whole weekend of the Bendigo Wool Show. We booked an Airbnb and had a great little weekend away. We went to the wool show on two different days, which took a lot of the urgency out of the shopping. We scoped out options on the first day, and then figured out exactly what we needed, and then went back with a plan the second day.

Highlights for me were all the beautiful hand dyed sock yarns, beautiful gradient packs of mini skeins, chips with cheese and gravy (as close to poutine as I’m gonna get here), the little wooden drawer thingy I got from the woodworkers association, craft cinema, Dani using a chair as a swift, pattern sharing, the immaculate lawn at the airbnb, and the fix for the car breaking down only costing $33.

This was my haul. Mostly sock yarn and the blue wool will be for a shawl.

Scott organised a blind taste test event for me as a #SMAJ activity. They do stuff like this on Masterchef Australia all the time and we always thought it would be fun. He had different categories and I had to name the flavours/types. Like cheese, Pringles flavours, Oreo varieties, juice types. And dark chocolate that I had to guess the percentage. I did better than I expected! The only thing that really confused me was the apple juice, it just tasted like pure sugar but I couldn’t figure out what flavour.

Priscilla and I did yet another pickleball tournament, at Pickleholic. It was a tough tournament! We only won one game and lost three. Was still fun though and we know lots of stuff to work on.

I love double hand backhand but it’s starting to hurt? I’m not sure what to do about this.

I finished my second Anyday Sweatshirt! It still needs a final blocking but I’ve been wearing it heaps already. It came out bigger than I intended but is actually so cozy like this I don’t even mind. I raced to finish it in time for a chance to win prizes in a knitalong, but unfortunately I did not win anything. I suppose the motivation was good though otherwise it probably still wouldn’t be done.

I made this little onigiri pouch as requested by Rose. It looks cute in this picture but in real life it’s not great.. it’s way too thick and the top can’t even close. I will make my own version sometime… maybe in 2029.

Unpictured Stuff:

  • 50 million physio appointments
  • Scott finished working

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Scott organised us a chill weekend away in the Daylesford area for the Labour Day long weekend. I’ve never been there before!

We stayed in Guildford, in an actual Bed & Breakfast, which I found unsettling. The breakfast was pretty epic though.

B.A.T.

We went for some walks.

It was Pride Weekend in Daylesford. Some areas were quite busy.

We went to the Sunday market. Scott was very happy to get this beetroot lifter Tupperware thingy in the same colour that he grew up with.

More walking, around the lake. Seems like it would be a nice place to go in the summer. There aren’t that many lakes in Australia.

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We decided to take a ride on the scenic train which slowly chugged along through the countryside.

We also had some great meals, played some board games, and had some relax knitting time. Overall a very pleasant weekend away.

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Scott took me to the night market at Queen Vic for a #SMAJ. We had a Sri Lankan roti stir fry, a lobster roll, some Filipino skewers, and a strawberry lemonade. It’s kind of fun to be able to have so many different cuisines at the same time, although it wasn’t cheap! We went at 5PM so at least there weren’t any lines.

We had a big weekend of pickleball at the Pickleholic Autumn tournament. On the Saturday Scott competed with Jarrod in the morning, and then I competed with Eloise in the afternoon. We went up a category so it was pretty hard!! Especially because my OG partner got injured the day before and Eloise and I only got organised at the last second. But fun was had. Then on Sunday Scott and I competed together in the lower division and we made the finals but lost both final games and finished 4th. We were happy that we played pretty well together that day though (doesn’t always happen).

A couple weeks later I did another tournament at Pickle Play Dingley with Priscilla and we crushed it!!! We squeaked into the finals, but then won both final games and came home with a gold medal! The final game was our first time playing with an umpire and a bunch of people watching, which made us very nervous at first but eventually we remembered to talk to each other again. It was a very fun day with lots of laughs and making friends, as Priscilla is very friendly.

Scott won a different tournament with Jarrod that evening as well, so it was a very good day of pickleball for our household!

We went to the Melbourne – Carlton game with low expectations, as everyone expected Melbourne to lose every game this season, but we won! Also, Scott stood up and caught the ball in a perfect mark and it was very funny and exciting. Everyone around us cheered.

I got drenched in a surprise Melbourne rainstorm while pumping gas and had to show up to my hair cut appointment looking like a drowned rat, haha.

I think my team might have a bit of a sugar addiction…

Chocolate is too expensive so I decided to try and make marshmallows for the nieces and nephews for Easter. It was pretty sticky and messy but they came out great and the kids seemed to love them!

I also tried making homemade pasta for the first time. We’ve got a pasta roller attachment for our stand mixer but not a cutter yet so we have to slice the noodles freehand. I also made a slow cooked beef ragu and it all turned out extremely delicious if I do say so myself.

I finished my scrappy stripey socks while on our Guildford trip. As per usual I am not that happy with the way the variegated yarn worked out. I probably should have just skipped over the weird brown section of the wool.

I used duplicate stitch to stitch two loons onto the cashmere gloves. I designed the loon pattern using my old cross stitch software, with the grid modified into rectangles instead of perfect squares. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out although it was not easy to do on a pair of gloves! I had to use a cookie cutter to keep the wrist opening open enough to be able to reach inside. I am planning on using this technique in the future on some kids sweater designs. Eventually.

I also worked on a pair of felted double layer slippers using chunky 100% wool. It was kind of a fun project although the (free) pattern sucked. I should probably write my own version.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Jono visited from Scotland and they went golfing and he came over for a very impromptu dinner.
  • April interviewed me for a school project about growing up in another country. I talked about having to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow of course.
  • We saw Project Hail Mary. Both of us enjoyed the audiobook. The movie was fun too.
  • Went to Braeside for a bird photography outing with my new lens and saw enough birds that I’ll make that it’s own post.
  • We went to Guildford for a #SMAJ weekend! I’ll write it up in another post too!

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In February Yo-Chi had a promotion that if you did 25,000 steps by 2PM you could get $15 of free fro yo per person, so Scott and I decided to try and do it. It was a very funny day. We walked all morning. I took extremely tiny steps to try and boost my numbers. We played pickleball as well which took care of a big chunk. We mayyy have cheated a little by taking turns wearing both watches at once for a bit so the other person could have a bit of a rest… but at least we showed up to the shop tired and sweaty, unlike some of the other people who 1000% cheated because they didn’t look tired at all!!!

Anyway I enjoyed my enormous free fro yo that probably took a month off my life.

I went camping for a night by myself! Near Kinglake. The only part I was worried about was whether I’d be able to set up the tent on my own, but it ended up being easy. I DON’T NEED NO MAN. :P All I did was set up my tent, make dinner, knit for a little while, and then moved into the tent to read once the mosquitos came out. The next day was one of my Birdlife photography meetups which was nice, but we barely saw any birds and I only took two pictures, both of which were terrible. lol.

Our #SMAJ activity was watching Pretty Women at the outdoor cinema. A cute evening. I hadn’t seen it before. Big mistake.

Of course we ordered the Wingspan South America expansion as soon as it came out. It adds on hummingbirds, which mostly just make it easier to get resources, so you can build more birds, which is always fun I guess. Can get a really good engine going.

One (creepy) glove done.

Cable knit blanket coming along. During the summer I could only work on it when we had the AC blasting during Free Power Hours, haha.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Sally had the whole gang over for a crafternoon. We got Malaysian takeaway and had a lovely chill hang out.
  • I watched 70 million hours of the Winter Olympics. Love it.
  • So much pickleball. Still addicted.

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November was more exciting! It seems like every year my November is actually way crazier than December. Everyone wants to get the celebrations started early.

We had my work Christmas party like a week and a half after our Halloween Bake Off haha! It was delicious. I picked steak for my entree for the exact opposite reason our boss doctor didn’t pick the steak: “I could have steak at home!” (We never have steak at home.)

Our second pickleball tournament went better, but it didn’t get recorded in DUPR so did it even happen?

And then our third tournament went very bad. We lost every game and it was quite discouraging. I was a bit pickleball depressed after that. (Better now.) We haven’t signed up for any more tournaments yet.

This group of friends had been talking about going out for peking duck for literally years and we finally went. We went to Hua Lu in the CBD and it was amazing!! As usual I was too busy stuffing my face to take any pictures of the epic amount of food. We had duck pancakes of course, plus the extra two duck courses, a mushroom dish and two types of tofu. Yum.

Naomi had the old work crew to her place again for a Christmas catch up gossip and pizza lunch. It was too cold for the pool this year but the bird show made up for it. :D

Scott planned a #smaj where we went to the driving range and then got Vietnamese food. The last time I hit a golf ball was with the Monnon’s when I was probably like… 11. Scott is a pretty good instructor but I was still extremely awkward. I missed the ball a lot and hit the ground many times. I can see why people think it’s fun though.

I got my hair cut and then went to a meetup with Discord friends. It was a pretty small gathering compared to some other meetups and I already knew everyone so it was pretty chill. Someone was talking about Caesar salad earlier in the day and then I had to order it for dinner. Hit the spot.

I had a really big fun day where first I went to an anime movie with Maz and Candace. I haven’t watched much anime before but I said yes to this outing because I’m Taking Charge Of My Saturdays (Scott always has bowls) and also it looked quite cute. It was called The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store and was about a department store where all the customers are different animals.

After the movie we got delicious Indonesian sandwiches for lunch and then walked to the Design Market. There was tons of cool stuff and I was able to get a lot of cute Christmas presents. Quite enjoyable.

Then we caught the bus to Bis’s for games, crafts, and dinner. I opted to do hand building with Jen and made a cute sturdy scalloped ash tray dish.

We got fish and chips for dinner and then I finally headed home. A big day.

We got a Ninja Creami from Costco during Black Friday sales. (I sold the big compressor ice cream maker because we weren’t using it much.) I think the Ninja Creami is fitting our lifestyle better. My favourite mixtures so far have been strawberry sorbet (pictured), which was just cooked strawberries and a bit of maple syrup, sticky date protein ice cream, and mango sorbet. It’s nice that we can make them with healthy and lactose free ingredients.

It rained A LOT and then we had a couple random super hot days so everyone’s yards went bonkers. Love how we have more stuff growing outside the garden boxes than inside.

Flying along on the pastel tank top. I really like the way she designed the neckline and sleeves. Took a while to do the sewing but it’s sooo neat and tidy.

Nanaimo bars ready for Christmas! I used a new recipe this year and I was quite pleased with how they turned out.

Unpictured stuff:

  • We had lunch at Jemma’s on Melbourne Cup Day for April’s birthday.
  • I went to the Western Treatment Plant with the birdwatching group but I’ll make a separate post about that.
  • We had another #smaj where we went to The Jar and rented a pickleball ball machine and tried to practice our drives (I am still quite bad at forehand drives.)