Today’s post has so many photos in it! That’s because over the Christmas and New Year break I have a beach holiday with my family where I take time away from my blog and from social media. Instead of creating new content, I will lurk and like other people’s things. I’ll also spend a week in a run down beach house with my favourite people. We do jigsaw puzzles and eat nachos and read books.
Because I’ve not done a blog post for an unusually long amount of time, today’s post is packed full of photos from the family beach trip. During the trip, we spend time in Geelong, Portarlington, St Leonards, Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff. My favourite place to shop is Queenscliff, but while in Geelong I picked up this gorgeous dress from a Seed store there. I’ve only seen Seed in passing as a small concession stand in MYER in Ballarat, so it was nice to get to see the whole range. There was also a skirt in the range that I desperately want, but I didn’t get it.
One of the family traditions is to buy a jigsaw puzzle from a local op shop on our first day and to spend many hours working away at it. Last year we didn’t finish it, which was incredibly frustrating. This year we got a fairly difficult 1500 piece puzzle. When we opened the box we discovered someone had separated out the edges and normal pieces before putting them in the box. We mixed them together before starting. It also turned out that every piece was numbered on the back. This came in handy when working on particularly difficult sections because we could check to see if a piece was in the right order or not. We got it done this time and then bought a couple of easier puzzles for the extra day. My father thought it would be amusing to take a piece of the puzzle and hide it so that when we finished and began looking around for the final piece, he could slink in and put it in taking the glory with his only contribution. My sister and I told him this was a metaphor for work life as a woman.
Halfway through the trip, I had to head home to fill in for a gig with a band in Ballarat. We were meant to drive back that night, but the car got a flat tyre. The spare on the car is a little temporary wheel like something of a billy cart and you can’t do over 80km/h with it on. The next day, being New Year’s Day, everything was closed so we couldn’t get the tyre fixed and we were in town without any of our things (having expected to head back to the beach). So, we drove back to the beach at under 75km/h. It took us hours. Dad swapped from the broken car to his car, which overheated within the hour, leaving 2 of our 4 cars out of action. I then tried to use my car to discover the battery was completely flat and I had to buy a new one, using up all my holiday money. What a way to welcome in 2017.
In spite of all the hilarious mishaps, it was still lovely. My sister was reading a book on Elizabeth I, also known as the Queen Mother. The things we learned from it were fascinating. I am tempted to read it after she is done, except it’s a thick book and I never get the time to read anymore. I seem to do too much. During the break The Enterprize, Melbourne’s Tall Ship, visit Portarlington. We went on it again but this time didn’t sail with it. You might remember I did two posts including it last year. You can find them here and here.
I took my laptop with me and worked away at the novel I’m writing a friend for Christmas. I’m nowhere near finished, but I’m making steady progress. After dinner, sometimes we would head to the hot jam doughnut van at the Portarlington pier. We usually ate dinner at the beach house but had lunch out. One of our favourite spots to eat is Ivary in St Leonards. The not only have freshly made pasta which you can also buy and take with you, they have gelato which you can get stuffed into a doughnut. It’s extra special to us because when my grandparents and great-grandparents had beach houses, they were in St Leonards. The one we spent time at as children had an Italian family across the road. My grandmother went across a few times and made fresh pasta with the Italian grandmother that lived there. Then she cooked it for me with fresh cheese. It was my first experience with freshly made pasta. After typing this, I’m now craving homemade pasta with cheese. The struggle is real. Anyway, there’s a pic of my at Ivary eating one of their gelato doughnuts at the end of the post.
Scarf: Inherited
Hat: Portmans
Dress: Seed Heritage
Shoes: Forever New
Photos: Goldfields Girl and Mum
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s blog post!
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