The Cat Still Loves Us

We headed up to Perth for an overnight visit last weekend.  I got busy in the kitchen first, I like to take goodies with me.  Firstly there was a marathon sausage roll making session, two sorts - a meat and veg variety plus spinach and ricotta ones.  Next was a batch of leek and potato soup. Then I made a batch of Pennie Darling's Aunt Carol's fudge.  :-)

 And also a birthday cake, for a special boy who was turning 27, I can't believe my baby is 27!  I was pleased with the cake, I used a reliable simple chocolate cake recipe, then I sliced the cake into halves (is halves the right word for a top and a bottom as opposed to 2 half circles? just wondering, it seems wrong), filled the middle with cream and homemade strawberry jam, then iced the top with butter cream icing, stuck maltesers all over it and some sprinkles.  It was yummy!

Happy Birthday dear Pauuulllllllll, Happppppy Birthhhhhhday tooooo youuuuuuuu xxx

We had a lovely little gathering at Paul's house to wish him a happy birthday.  Here is Steve and Michelle.

 And here is mum, the birthday boy himself, and Paul's girlfriend Sam. 

We said to goodbye to Paul and Sam, then Steve, Michelle, mum and I headed off to the hospital to visit poor dear dad, who is flat on his back after surgery following rupturing the tendons in both his knees after a fall.  He is struggling through the painful and slow rehabilitation process at the moment, gritting his teeth and learning how to walk again.  Hang in there dad, we love you and think about you often, sending healing thoughts. xx

 After we finished at the hospital, Michael joined us after work and we went out for a meal with Michelle, Michael and mum.  It was really good to see everyone.  :-)  xx

We arrived home with some trepidation, having left Neo home alone to be a batchelor overnight.  He is the type of pussycat to wreak vengeance if you piss him off, so we wondered what he has felt was our deserved punishment.  As it turns out this is all he did, a chomp on a CD cover that was left out.  We got off lightly!

 I thought he might punish us the night we got home, by biting our toes and creating havoc, but no, he snuggled in at the end of the bed, went all purry, and slept like an angel.  He must have missed us bless his little cotton socks.

 A couple of days later Michael, who was blessed suddenly with a week's leave, came down to stay with us.  Here he is with us at Boston Brewery where we popped in for a pizza for lunch.  Michael likes to climb mountains (and to quote Michael's wisdom, apparently the difference between a hill and a mountain is that a mountain is over 600 metres high), so he disappeared at dawn every morning and climbed every peak on the Stirling Ranges and the Porongurups.  Impressive!

 Michelle had to work so she stayed home to look after the lovely Heidi dog.  Heidi was a lucky dog, spending plenty of time indoors on her comfy bed having plenty of her favourite tummy rubs from her favourite girl person.

 While Michael was away climbing mountains we got on with our homelife.  I spent two mornings preparing and pickling the olives, 14 one litre jars and 6 two litres jars stuffed full of yummy kalamatas.  Looking forward to the beginning of September when they will be ready. 

While I was busy with that, Steve spent time cleaning up the shed as we are having some electrical work done in a few weeks.  We are getting the new bore pump wired up properly to the shed power, a couple more power points in the shed and a light wired up properly.  We are also having our house water tank pump wired up independently to our house.  Currently the house tank pump is connected to our house power, and as it is a powerful pump, every time it comes on it has a impact, either dimming the lights momentarily or slowing appliances.  We've ummed and ahhed about this issue for a while and finally decided to wire it separately to the house.

I thought I had finished my forest floor embroidery, but I'm not sure now.  As I did my log on an angle, it feels a little out of whack to me and I think I need to do something else low down on the right to fix the symmetry.  Will leave it a while and ponder this.  I think I'd like to do another blackwork piece next, I have in my mind an idea to try and convert one of my magpie photos into blackwork, still trying to work out how I'm going to do it.

 We had a spontaneous buy, a new quirky clock for the living room.

 We are both about to undertake a get fitter campaign, so we have plenty of walks on the cards.  We had a wander along Shelley Beach the other day, which is a beautiful beach, although not the kindest to walk along, it is quite sloped with deep, soft sand, which tends to make our knees complain.  I love the big Pacific gulls, at least I think that's what they are, and I believe this is a juvenile as it has the brownish colouring.  Regardless, it's very pretty! :-)