visited HOTA on the Gold Coast.

 HOTA (Home of the Arts) Gold Coast is a great reason to visit the Gold Coast. 

Fun isn't it?

For those of us not enamoured with surfing, sunning and other adventure sports we are very happy to add this Gallery to our activity list when heading South. Being only an hour away from our place, I do tend to treat the Gold coast as an outer suburb of Brisbane.

The current featured exhibition comes from the Mugrabi Collection in New York; a glorious treat of Modern art featuring Warhol, Hirst, Basquiat & Haring, among others.

For the 'Creed' of this Group, see below.

Did you know that......

Examples here:-

and here:-

Slide Show continues with other favourites.

And to support their theory that 'Art is what you can get away with', a piece by Damian Hirst.

The Exhibition continues until 2nd June.......

& I'm off to my Art Studio; I have a few ideas!

go for a drive in the Scenic Rim

 Easter Saturday, a good day for a drive in the country.

 Morning Tea and Lunch at 2 new to us cafes and a bonus of views to Cunningham Gap.

 

Lake Moogerah & nearly morning tea time.

Lake Moogerah Cafe full of vintagey, garden goodness.

On our table, vintagey and garden goodness.

Just for fun, a collection of retro waterskis & more plants.

Moving onto the Scenic Rim Farm Shop......

Table on the verandah to watch the shenanigans...and enjoy the feast.

Happy Easter to all.

look back 10 years to family birthday fun.

 April is a very busy birthday month for our family. 2 sisters & 3 cousins.

Just for fun we recreated photos shown on my Blog; 10 years ago to the day; 7/04/23.

Mia and Lexie 2013

                                                                      Mia 2023 (Lexie working in Beijing)


                                                          

Suzanne Leesa and Manda 2013

Suzanne Leesa and Manda 2023

Emma, Annabel, Jess Lexie and Mia 2013

Mia 2023

(Annabel Qantas FA on her way to HNL, Jess living and working in Florida, Lexie working in Beijing, Emma working at Mater Hospital, Springfield)

There is some empty nesting angst as you might imagine, but we tried to have an enjoyable day anyway.

am revisiting my Blog.

 The last blogpost I made was back in 2016.

Such a lot has happened since then. Should I revisit this medium? I've thoroughly enjoyed re reading my previous posts, so let's see how we go.

It'll cover Art, Creativity, Travel, Family & Friends, Food, Nonsense... all of the important things in my life.

I'm going to take a deep breath and push the Publish button!

wish I was a beer drinker

Right outside the Brewery in Dunedin, they have a tap on the street.

You can fill up your bottles any time of the day or night.

Genius! 

Reveal the views from our hotel windows in NZ

One of the first things one usually does when entering a fresh hotel room is to open the curtains to check out the view.
Here's how that worked out for us in New Zealand on our recent trip.

Firstly Christchurch. (They do have a good excuse though.)





Dunedin was next on our itinerary. (The red building with the smoke stack is the brewery)

In Queenstown, we checked in to the Scenic Suites. Not so much....

You can see the lake!

From the balcony you could see the top of the cable car

Oamaru. The view should have been this, but wasn't. (It was so boring I didn't even take a photo)

... and back to Christchurch; at a different hotel.

Maybe we'll do better next time we travel?

take a walk through a New England garden.

Whenever Paul and I visit his family in Armidale, one of my favourite things to do is to walk around his sister's garden.

The weather there is so very different to Brisbane. 

New England in Oz actually has seasons! frosts and occasional snow in Winter and of course a real Spring with flowers that we just can't grow in the tropics.

Take a walk with me in Kay's garden.

I don't think I've ever seen Hellebores before. They grow in gorgeous clumps like this, but don't face upwards.

If you encourage them, they'll lift their heads and you can enjoy their beauty.

The wattles provided an amazing showing all the way along the New 

England Highway. Kay has 3 varieties on her property.

.....but back to the Hellebores. She has these planted in a meadow, and in a large bowl. There must have been at least 20 different coloured ones showing.

To top it all off, she also has a flock of geese.