Child-free Weekend

My parents have kindly taken our girls for 3 nights! Their cousins (girls 7 & 9) are there too, so I guess there's LOTS of giggling and girl-stuff going on.

Steve and I decided to go out for the day yesterday, and went to Glebe, an inner-city area where there are markets and antique and second-hand shops.


We went to the markets, but didn't find anything really exciting there, it was mostly clothes and average jewellery. Steve found a second-hand chess book, but there weren't many secondhand dealers at all, which was disappointing. However we ate delicious gozlemes while sitting on a grassed area listening to a jazz guitarist, which was nice.

Then we went to a second-hand music shop, where I was happy to find some recorder music which I will use for my recorder class this year. Recorder is not such a popular instrument, it seems, these days, so it's difficult to find good music, mostly I have to really on my own arrangements or books printed in the 70s and 80s. I was thrilled to find a book I have been searching for for the last few years, I couldn't even find it on the internet! Also we found some flute music which hopefully Laura can play one day.


Then we went to the one little shop which I really wanted to go to - we had based our whole "expedition" around it - and it was closed! Such a disappointment. And in the window were 2 jugs on special I definitely would have bought. Sigh. That is the trouble with January - so many small businesses are closed -mostly antique dealers and coffee shops. Oh well, I guess they are entitled to a break too! It's a shame that it coincides with our break!


But two things made our whole trip worthwhile - visiting Ruby Star Traders (and finding them on sale!) and walking around a beautiful bay in the sunshine on the way home. Everything you see in these photos was from there (except the bowl and paper flowers in the first photo) - gorgeous papers, handpainted ornaments (Christmas but not too Christmassy to display all year) all $1-$3. I had so much fun picking out what to buy!

Then last night we went out for dinner (another post coming about that!)
Today we are enjoying a quiet non-interrupted day at home, a little tidying, a little reading, a little rearranging, and a little eating of nice things. Speaking of which, it's time to put the kettle on ...