Isnt today about me?

 

Today my friends from the gym and I didn't lie in bed and get pampered for mothers day.  No we joined 40,000 other mums and their families to help raise money for Breast Cancer.  We have a friend at the gym who is currently undergoing treatment and her wonderful daughter in law set up Team Lynne.

 My partner in crime decided that we would run the 4km first together as Lynne was a runner when she was well.  This was our special tribute to her.  It was a very emotional event as you can imagine.

 We ran at 8.15am then met all our friends for 9.30am for the 4km walk.  In the time between us reaching the start line and returning the crowd had tripled but the atmosphere was great.  All the kids that joined us mums in our group paired off and had a great time.

 The noisy one on the right was overjoyed to see her friend joining us and they surged ahead in the crowd.. our t shirt that we had designed looked fabulous and made it so easy to see each other.  Lynne loves turtles and the colour green, look on the loop of the L and you will see a little turtle... and on the front of our t shirt is a bigger turtle.

 The crowd seemed to go on forever.

 The kids had lined up on the bollards and I was lucky to grab a snap shot.

On Friday night I went to a ladies night at my local bike shop, our team leader is a talented lady and made these lovely cupcakes with little choccy bikes!

I also received from my girls a pair of toe thingys... yes they are called that, they are covers that slip over my shoes to help keep me toasty warm on these cooling days when I'm cruising on my beast.

bike riding

Last Sunday I rode 74km, was a lovely day to ride.  
Then on Thursday I rode 72km, it was ANZAC day and before we left we stood and had a minutes silence in memory of those who fought for our country.  We had our Less We Forget bands on our bikes for the duration of the ride.

The route we took was challenging, we rode up through Arthur's Creek and around the back up to Kinglake... there is a hill called Mad dog (or something like that) and you have to be mad to ride a bike up there.  Then I got told there was more....  8km of pure climbing.

Here's the profile, as you can see it just goes up and up... and up.  of course what goes up must come down!

I clocked 62km, what a massive rush!  Instead of sitting on the hard shoulder which isn't a bike lane but a nasty skinny lumpy piece of rubble I came out on the road itself... what a difference!  I shot past my bestie which put a massive grin on my face and I think I startled her!

Next time I will come out onto the road earlier.. make sure you aren't in a car behind me! I have one more saddle to test out before I make my decision...

some cooking and sewing

 the noisy one is doing junior bakers at school this semester... I was treated to a Delicious Monte Carlo for my afternoon tea today. was bloody good too!

 Last night she decided at 9pm to make choc chip cookies for her friends at school, I managed to snag one before she packed them into brown paper bags and hide them in her school bag.

 I decided I would try and be all arty farty and stacked them up for a photo...

 She also made hazelnut choc muffins with a chocolate ganache icing... my work colleagues thought they were Divine.... I must say she is pretty good in the kitchen with baking goodies, specially chocolate stuff.

 Today is my besties birthday. I bought her a yoga mat as the ones at the gym are rather yukky, I got her a mat with cherry blossom design and I got myself one with koi carp (they were on special after all!!)

 So then I had a brainwave, I needed to make a bag for us to cart them into class.  I found some lovely fabric that another friend had made for me a while ago.  Then I decided that the bag will be a little neat so needed some slippery fabric to line it with.... I was very thrifty!  I popped into savers and found exactly what I needed for a whole 99c  then I decided to find cord or ribbon, nothing in savers but a few doors up is one of those cheapo Asian shops and I scored a reel of ribbon for $2  and the best thing was the lining and the ribbon matched well!

There was a flour explosion in my kitchen.....

weekend stuff

 One of my friends at the gym has been diagnosed with breast cancer, she would run every day to the gym.  Her daughter in law created a team for her for the mothers day classic.  My partner in crime and I are going to run 4 km for Lynne... I'm not a runner but I will do it for her.  Then we will join all our friends from the gym and our little girls and walk 4km for her.
We are getting T-shirts organised and the gym is going to do a fund raiser for breast cancer with a mega class.  I am blessed to be part of a wonderful bunch of women (and men!) who rally together when times are tough.

 The noisy one made garlic rice (was bit more like risotto in the end) and had BBQ chicken to go with it.  was quite nice, she needs to make a few more things, zucchini slice is next, she keeps pulling a face but I think she will be surprised.

 Tomorrow is club championships.... 4 hours plus poolside, timekeeping, running around with timing sheets, marshaling kids and conning parents into coming onto the committee for the new year!

I also managed to ride just under 100km on Thursday and Friday morning with my friends, we did a new route with a couple of nice hills (yes I hear you laughing or choking).  I scored myself 2 QOM's... now I have you all wondering!!  Queen of the Mountain.  When you ride the fastest up a hill you get the title of KOM or QOM... its what many riders strive for... yes I do have a competitive streak in me.  OH  the saddle testing is going well, I have tried 2 similar saddles both are so much better than the above one.

 Milly loves to garden with me, today I picked up the secateurs and she went bananas!  I butchered the climbing rose as the rose hips were dragging it to the ground... she was tossing them in the air.. loon!

And Mr Cookie???  well.... the little b$#(@(#ered  escaped last night from the house at about 11pm  I was sick with worry as he is a house cat and has very little outside experience.  He returned at 3 freaking AM!  I was able to sleep.  He was exhausted by his adventure and I hope he hasn't acquired a taste for travel.

adrenalin rush

 The noisy one has to do some baking for school and take photos so she made banana bread...

 then a custard teacake... was rather tasty!  She needs to make some savoury stuff too, hope its on a work day so I don't have to cook dinner!

 The adrenalin rush today was brought to you  by the Victorian BJJ championships.....

 The froglet competed in her weight division and scored herself a Silver medal.... she was so disappointed with herself for loosing the gold but she knows what she needs to do next time.  I'm proud of her regardless of her placing and I said later you will be less disappointed in your loss and proud of your win.

 The noisy one had a 15th birthday and has been banging on for the past 2 years about getting a onesy.... these are her feet.

Mr Cookie Cat happened to get in the way of the camera and got snapped.... hes a handsome man.

busy weekends

 I have bulbs to be planted in my garden.... one hundred of the bloody things!!  They will look magnificent when they flower, I have miniature  daffodils, jonquils and hyacinths,

 Love these, they look like hairy monsters! I should put googly eyes on them and freak out the family.

 my yellow climbing rose is flowering, they look and smell lovely but they also don't last very long and blow open in a day.

 Cookie looks a bit stoned here.... think he might have just woken from one of his many slumbers.

 I finally picked up some fabric to make my cousins baby quilt.  I needed a jelly roll and a charm pack but they didn't have the charm pack so used a layer cake instead and have a little left over... gotta love left overs!

 I also discovered  that trying to sew a true 1/4" seam without the correct foot on your machine makes life extremely difficult, in fact it totally stuffed up my blocks and I had to cut them smaller.  Fortunately this particular pattern worked with a smaller block and no one will know.. except if you read this blog.

 Last week the noisy one joined me for my second tough blokes adventure.  Some of you might have heard of tough blokes... this one is slightly less insane.  You run a 7km course filled with 24 obstacles... the first being a mud pit... this year we dressed up as school girls and boys and running in a short muddy dress was much easier than last years flannel PJ's... bananas in PJ's!!

The mud also had a lot of stones in it so our knees and elbows got rather grazed this year.  We completed the course in a good time and had lots of fun again.

The next event is the mothers day classic, my buddy and I will be running 4kms for our friend who has been battling bowel cancer and now has been diagnosed with breast cancer.  She used to run all the time so we decided to run for her.  Then we will join up with our daughters and other gym buddies to walk as a team for her.  Will be a day with many emotions.

triple layer slice!

 The noisy one is a real sweet tooth.  When i saw the cover of the newest food magazine that I sometimes buy (I used to buy it every month but find it has become very repetitive).  We had to use a spring form tin but I think it worked really well.

 She is doing 2 cooking electives at school this semester so has become quite food obsessed orientated. So I have once again pulled out some of my favourite recipe books and encouraged her to choose some to help me make in the coming week.

 She did a fantastic job at getting the layers to do just what they were supposed to do, she chose to use port wine jelly and popped a few pink marshmallows into the mix but it really tastes great!!

This is what it looks like when its professionally made and photographed, I reckon she has done an awesome job to recreate it using what we had in our kitchen!

How many of you have made something from a mag or book only to find it comes out nothing like the picture?