Time to celebrate...

Bay turned 5 on Friday - 5! I still struggle to believe 5 years have gone past since she came screeching into the world at Barnet Hospital. If there's one thing I've learnt from her gorgeous, but rapid years gone by, it's to stop and ponder on the little things from time to time - those smiles, the little quirky habits, the jokes, the tears - all those things that make them into the great little people they are today. Life goes way too quick....

To celebrate her new digit, we held a party at Hyde Park with 20 little princesses, a pinata, pass the parcel, musical statues and fairy bread of course. For international readers, fairy bread is quite simply white bread smothered in margarine with hundreds and thousands speckled on top. Sounds pretty gross hey? Well, for the record it is, but for some reason unbeknown to the grown ups, the kids absolutely love it and usually end up snuffling it up like there's some sort of sugar famine.

We enjoyed a bit of hand made love in prep for her big day - heart shaped lollies, keepsake cards and fairy cakes were fun to make, whilst the main attraction - the cake - was promptly guzzled up by kids and parents alike.

The lady came away with some beautiful gifts which she will treasure forever - gorgeous hard backed books, hand made bag and purse, hair accessories and enough arts and crafts to keep her busy for the rest of the year. Don't you just love parties?!!!

Fitness or fatness...you decide

One thing I love about Oz is people’s commitment to fitness. It might be the hot weather that does it - the scorching hot sun that necessitates the need to be in your smalls for at least 4-5 months of the year. But it’s also something to do with that quintessentially Australian ‘can-do’ attitude, a conquer all approach to life that makes Aussies a force to be reckoned with.

Fitness hounds are most often witnessed first thing in the morning when they can be seen clad in Lycra, stretching/running and panting furiously with their trainers in Perth's parks. There are local meditation classes EVERY morning in Hyde Park, Zumba classes are packed to the brim, cycling to work is considered de rigueur (especially if you have a woven basket on the front) and tai chi is the relaxation method of choice.

The thing that truly impresses however is the commitment to working out in furious heat. Whilst most of us are cowering away in the confines of our comfortable air conditioned cars and houses, there is a large bunch of Perthites parading their beautiful bods along beach fronts, cafe strips and inner city shopping centres. Now THAT'S impressive.

On the flip side, WA certainly isn’t exempt from the obesity epidemic that’s sweeping the rest of the world. There are fast food restaurants a-plenty selling deep fried everything to hordes of hungry customers – especially on Friday nights it seems when cars can be seen queuing outside the Hungry Jacks/Chicken Treat/KFC/Macca's drive thru's for yet another family burger fest.

Whilst us Greens have a fairly positive approach to fitness, I can’t say we’ve been swayed either way really. Not being a lover of sweat, I’ve chosen not to join the masses of cyclers, runners, walkers etc who brave the fierce heat to preserve their svelte looking bods. Instead, I use the Xbox Kinect and the Your Shape workout – an interactive fitness method that gets the heart rate up and targets all those important bits – bum, thighs, tum – that I, and most other women on the planet hate. The beauty of it is I get to position myself under the aircon which means less sweat, no onlookers and a cooler, more comfortable workout.

To contradict everything I’ve just said, I do plan to visit the Bikram Yoga centre around the corner at some point this month. Getting in to numerous tricky poses in 38 degree heat doesn’t exactly fill me with joy but I can see the merits in practicing in a professional environment with yoga-know-hows – the Bikram fanatics who can vouch for its life changing benefits (and help me perfect that tree pose...)

Bring on the sweat fest.

Sculpture by the sea

There's something a little bit lovely about sculptures of varying sorts scattered on a beach, especially with blue sky and crashing turquoise waves supplying the backdrop.

This arvo we made our second trip to Sculpture by the Sea - a dynamic and innovative array of visual artistry at Cottesloe beach. The idea, brought to fruition by David Handley - was inspired by a sculpture park in Pragues' Northern Bohemia and encourages kids, adults, grannies, dogs etc to get amongst the structures, talk about their meaning and vote for favourites.

It's rare to see such a large group of people enjoying open art like this in Perth - in fact it's rare to see a large volume of people anywhere really, but there they were in mass numbers photographing, voting, swimming, exploring and discussing these exciting creations. 

Bay loved the colourful contraptions on the beach and enjoyed picking out her faves. Fin, on the other hand was too busy complaining about the post-swim sand in his trollies to have much of an opinion. Hey-ho...it's on until 19 March so perhaps he'll be a little more inspired next time.

Visit the Sculpture by the Sea website

The Magic of the Movies

With the afternoon free today Mr G and I took Master F to the movies to see Hugo - a splendid example of film-making that's set in late 1930's Paris.

Armed with 3D glasses, we settled into our seats for a two hour session of visual delights encompassing glorious views of Paris, stunning scenery, old fashioned machinery and a beautiful set of characters that charmed the socks off the three of us. Moreover, it exemplified the passion that can come through a film when the people behind it are truly dedicated to creating something unique and special.


Everything - from the heart shaped key that Isabelle carries as a pendant and the automaton that Hugo is trying to fix; to the splash of character sketches that glide through the air when the children unearth a hidden box - is created with one big dose of love that's often missing from modern day movies.


This is first and foremost a movie about making movies and doing them with such creative charm that they lie embedded in the memory for decades to come. It's also brimming with tons of great British talent - Emily Mortimer, Sacha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee and a great American actress - Chloe Grace Moretz whose British accent well and truly kicked ass...

I wasn't quite sure how the master of film-makers planned to work the 3D format into his plan, but un-surprisingly it was nothing short of perfect - adding drama, intensity and surprise in equal measures.  As with any 3D movie, I often wonder how they transcribe when they end up on the shelves in Blockbuster and are taken home to be viewed on normal TV's, but can now see that with a great story line, thoughtful and surprising character development and a great big dose of charm (which Hugo has in equal measures) the small screen version will be equally as delightful.

So to summarise, us Greens give Hugo a great big fat 10/10. This movie is a prime example of true cinematic brilliance. But with Scorcese at the helm, it couldn't be anything other than perfect really could it?

Satur-cake-day

My daughter, cake obsessed fraggle that she be has officially declared post-ballet Saturday morning's as goodies time. Now I wouldn't mind this so much were it not for the astronomical, quite frankly ridiculous prices of cakes and coffee in Perth.

Yes we live in the inner city burbs where you can expect the going prices for your beverage of choice and a slice of something fancy to be a little above average, but $25 for 1 x green tea, 1 x coffee, 1 x babycinno and three teeny tiny macaroons? Seriously? That's one hell of a mark up.

Sadly, the lazy baker in me would prefer to pay this than muster up some homemade delights of my own (which would most probably be inedible anyway) so I should probably zip it and suck it up. Alternatively I should head more often to Dolcetto - a reasonably priced cafe, sporting THE most amazing cakes known to man. Angela - we'll be in for a visit soon!

http://www.dolcetto.net.au/

Fabulous Feist

Dan and I donned our finest festie gear again last week and headed to the Perth Museum for the Laneway Festival - a veritable treat of talented artists belting out some great songs on a sunny saturday arvo. Despite feeling old and not quite trendy enough (grrrrrr), we had THE best time - including a performance by Feist that will go down in history as my best live music experience yet.
Laura Marling is such a sweet, delicate little flower but man alive that girl can sing! Her voice is so pure and natural and I loved the way she looked up to the sky when working those vocals. Can't wait to get the album now...yet another great British artist doing something brilliant.

The finest point of the day was of course listening to Leslie belt out her tunes. They started out with The Bad in Each Other which made me a little bit giddy, followed by some new tracks from the new album Metals and some classic old tunes. She is officially the coolest rock chick on the planet. Am seriously considering learning guitar (hello Glenny!) so I can get that riff going...
Check the live version out on Jools: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnj8_aDBJT8

I'm back....

Well that was one long big break....after returning to the wonderful (albeit slightly stressful) world of work, blogging sadly took a backseat. So the new plan is to write once a week with a mixture of musings from Green family life, Perth experiences (the good and the bad) and hopefully the odd self-made photograph too. And by that I mean pics that have been technically considered with the Nikon beast and aren't simply a quick spin of the instgram wheel.

Those damned iphones make things so easy...

Things I'm looking forward to this week: getting back to work tomorrow after a week-long chest infection, dinner with the Green team on Friday night, a few sneaky macaroons after ballet on Saturday morning, more of mum's homemade lemon cake, oh and the Laneway Festie! I finally get to see my heroine Leslie Feist. 1,2,3,4....here we come :)