It's the weekend again ... for me anyway!

Yup, today is Thursday officially, but for me it's Friday, as I have the next three days off. I'm up early tomorrow morning to head off to the airport, then off socialising for the weekend. Tonight I'll be having an early night due to only getting 4 hours sleep last night ... oops. Fraze came over to stay last night, and we headed off out to dinner to a new place that was recommended to me quite some time ago - it has a special "steak night" Tue/Wed each week, and their scotch fillet steaks sell for AU$12, where it's usually AU$18, and it's a great meal ... well worth the drive, we thought, anyway. The venue is The Grace Darling hotel, 114 Smith Street, Collingwood - nice atmosphere, and pretty good tucker (crikey, I sound more like an Aussie every year I live here! haha). We enjoyed it so much, we're thinking of making a repeat performance next Tuesday before I go back to shift work.

We cracked open a bottle of red wine when we got home, and made a ceremonial toast before doing "the deed" ... the "deed" in this case was to cut up my gold Amex card into itty bitty little pieces - that gave me such an amazing amount of pleasure, it was awesome! I've had nothing but grief from them since I moved to Aussie (it was a NZ credit card), but one of my key reasons for getting debt consolidation was to pay the sucker off, and cut it up - and boy, oh boy, it felt good! :D

Unfortunately no stitching done yet again, as I was out all day/night, and tonight I'm a bit overtired to stitch (we sat up watching TV and chatting until 2am ... not clever when the alarm is due to go off at 6.30am!) The great news, though, is that my batman chart arrived in the post yesterday, so I can stitch that quilt block next week :) I also now have one more exchange that's been added to my May stitching calendar - a scissors fob for an exchange on the StitchNZ Yahoo group. I'll start thinking about what to stitch next week some time.

Thanks for your suggestions on my biscornu exchange - I have to admit, I'd already decided to add the initials etc to the bottom, but I was hoping to include a border or something ... I had one idea at the start, that I'll probably end up doing, and hope it won't take me too long to stitch. Mind you, with luck if I get home early enough on Sunday I could get a bit of stitching done then, which would be great.

Thanks also for your lovely comments on the frangipani ... I think it's one of the most beautiful flowers in the world - but apart from looking beautiful, the scent is amazing! It's very heady, and very tropical. I didn't have any luck growing one in Auckland - unfortunately frangipani don't like frosts, and we used to have a lot of quite harsh frosts turning the entire garden white ... it might be OK here in Melbourne, but I have nowhere to grow one ... bummer! The weather in Melbourne at the moment is far from tropical - but very very stunning! It's been a glorious couple of days with blue skies, moderate temperatures, and the autumn leaves giving a wonderful display of reds, bronzes and golds while driving around the streets. I went for a wander at lunchtime today with my camera to try and capture a couple of shots before all the leaves fall off (unfortunately a lot have already disappeared since last week), and thought I'd share a couple with you. It seems strange to think most of you are in the northern hemisphere and enjoying the throes of Spring as we speak, whereas those of us down under are batting down the hatches for the arrival of winter weather ... :) The bottom photo I've posted is the street I've been parking my car in for work - I love scrunching through the leaves in the mornings ... makes my heart sing! :D

If I don't get chance to blog again over the next few days, I wish each and every one of you a wonderful weekend :)