Sunny Satisfying Sunday

I really did have the most wonderful day yesterday. Despite having double booked myself and missing out on the bestest cup cake party ever!
I went to see the ever welcoming Prendergast family at Hepburn Lagoon horse rides. A stunning day, a trek through some beautiful bushland and a very challenging game of I Spy kept us entertained on our ride. I have to say, a very welcome glass of wine and food at the other end was just what the doctor ordered to mellow my new sore-bum feeling OVER-SHARE WARNING! (including my newly popped bum-crack blister!)

The two little girls in our party had the best time after the ride was over, helping with the shearing, riding sheep (?) and cuddling these little (actually, enormous at 4 weeks old!) goslings.


I almost came home with one until I came to my senses after a rather messy poo-ing in lap incident.
Flying over to Muskvale to try and catch the last of the party fun I almost missed the birthday girl completely but caught them literally in the driveway. In case you couldn't tell from my last post, I got more than a little carried away in making a gift for a 6 year old, making dresses, sewing doll undies, making luggage and hobo headband. Ooh the fun I had!

But then,... oh dear, I became more than a little riddled with concern that perhaps my gift was a little too babyish for it's intended new home... are 6 year olds too cool for dolls? Do today's glamorous girls demand pop star plastic and strut your stuff garb? Indeed they do, but as it turns out they also love a handmade, slightly wonky, one arm longer than the other, kitted out with clothing, dolly.

Phew.

The Bush, the Lamb and Chinese Whispers

Somewhere in distant memory I recal a very brief discussion with a neighbour (6kms down the road, but still, a country kinda neighbour) about a bush party they were planning, in aide of the sale of their particularly lovely 27acre bush/farmland block in the lovely little hamlet of Rocklyn (Famous for its sadly demised Rocklyn Roses). This distant memory, fuelled in its vagueness by Stones Ginger wine at local groovy haunt 'The Palais', soon came to slap me in the chops (excuse the pun) when last week said lovely neighbour Dave called me to remind me that celebrations were forth-coming and to take me up on my kind offer of organising a lamb on a spit for the occasion!

Why! Imagine my Surprise, nay, nervous bewilderment, as he recounted my boasts of being a sheep-wrestling, char-grilling, rotate-a-riffic, lamb-on-a-spit master! (Gulp) Now don't get me wrong, there is a grain of truth to these outrageous claims, I have in my day assisted in the occasional Al fresco lamb cooking experiences, however I think that salivating over tasty sheepy cooking smells at other events then lamely hiring a gas fired version from the Daylesford butchers doesnt back up my outrageous claims!

Too late now! I'm in at the deep end, so grabbing my orange inflatable armbands and nose-clip I garble a hasty goodbye and speed-dial 'The Most Useful Bloke I Know', my elderly neighbour, Reggie.

Reg deserves every capital letter in his for-mentioned superhero pseudonym, whipping up in a welding frenzy a device to put to shame all other homemade-sheep-cooking devices and so armed I set forth to wrestle a half-frozen sheep carcass onto its custom-made star picket roasting device! good old Reg to the rescue once again! Phew!

Needless to say the lamb was amazing (at least that was the word from sheep-greasy, normally vegetarian mouths) and Reg was grumpily but secretly pleased to be guest-of-honour and I lived up to self-proclaimed sheepy genius! Huzzah huzzah!