Easter

Invitation out to the Gibbs' side of the family for an egg-hunt at ours on Sunday. Hunting eggs duly purchased and I searched for likely items for a basket for the kids. I couldn't find anything that appealed, so went to the fabric store and bought some calico. In the interests of environmental responsibility, I decided to make six little bags for the munchkins to use to collect eggs. Girls had flowers stitched on, Ryan and Toby had stars and elephants respectively. I took the photo seconds before the hunt happened and obviously didn't focus it at all. To one side you'll also see I finished my sudoku cushion - didn't come out quite as expected.
The Hunt is On! Here's the kids towards the end of the egg hunt. Kids loved their bags! And, of course, once Easter is over, they can be re-used!

Zoo Friends

We made our second visit to Taronga Zoo today. This time we visited the little penguins (which is where we lost Number Two Son last time), seals, elephants, meerkats, pygmy hippos, lions, tigers, snow leopard, gorillas, and platypus (in the platypus house this time). We also found a couple of waddling Echidna, a couple of brush-tailed rock wallabies, crocodiles, alligators, giant tortoise, a sleepy wombat, some extremely frolicking feathertail gliders (because they'd just been fed), bilbies, potaroos, and a tawny frogmouth too. Despite the gloomy weather, we had moments of sunshine, not terribly many crowds to contend with, BYO lunch and Zoo Friends discounts in the giftshop and for parking. The highlight was a visit to the elephants, catching the keeper talk and play session and seeing Luk Chai (Son), Pathi Harn (Miracle) and Tukta (Doll) playing in the water for what seemed like an age!

The other highlight for me was the news that the platypus at Taronga have puggles! Puggle is the name for a baby platypus. Apparently, Mum won't let them out of the burrow until they're the same size as she is. Its awesome that they are breeding in captivity! And I felt so lucky to be able to see the platypus swimming around inside; I'm afraid my family had to drag me away. I can't wait to see more of the platypus when we next visit. Joining zoo friends was the best idea! It will be fun to visit again before December this year.

Easter Bilby punch-art

In recent years for Easter in Australia there has been a campaign to raise awareness of one of our cuter endangered species, the Bilby. An Australian chocolate manufacturer, Darrell Lea, started making chocolate Bilbies for easter in 1994. From 1999, Darrell Lea has donated part of the proceeds from chocolate bilby sales to the "Save the Bilby" fund. So in celebration of Easter in Australia, I've designed a punch-art Bilby! They're nocturnal little guys so I started out putting them on a night of navy background. Didn't look right though. They're mostly in semi-arid areas of Australia and burrow in our dry-dry orange-golden dirt. So this is what I came up with based on a recent birthday card for a class using the "Autumn Days" stamp set...
I took a few photos along the way to show how I put this together. These bilbies are actually refinement number 3 - the first two were not-quite-right. And my daughter added her two cents saying just one looked "lonely" so I should make another for the card. The image below shows the bits I used and very simple instructions. Print this and the card above and I'm sure clever people can figure it out!
Happy punching!