215/365 My Pre Teen

Eeeeek! When did you get so big, and cool, Buster B??!

172/365 Happy Sunday

120/365 Toast Anyone?

How do you like your toast?

I gave up vegemite when Kingsley Tiger became gluten free. But I can't say I hold a complete personal ban when it comes to late cafe breakfasts by myself! #sneaky #comfortfood ;)

100/365 Celebrating 100!

I made it to 100!!

I'm a little surprised and a lot impressed with myself. Lol.
That's a bit telling isn't it - yes, I often get excited about big projects but managing to see them through is always harder than one expects.

So here is photo 100 of my 365 #photoaday2014 project.

And a big thank you to everyone who has been so lovely and so supportive.

Yippee! Now, there's just that small issue of the next 265 days. Lol ;)
And yes, I celebrated with cake. Baklava to be precise. And God-damn it was good! x

94/365 Cafe Marius

Welcome to my new favourite coffee spot! Cafe Marius in Lennox Head.

Good coffee, cute + happy staff, awesome mex-inspired food with loads of gf options. #drool.

78/365 Gardenia Love

Utopia Cafe. March 17. 2014.

I love Gardenias. We planted one in our yard but it fell over in a big storm (we get a lot of big storms here!) before we went away and had to be cut down. I'm happy to say its growing back now :) but too little to flower. Luckily there are gardenias in the gardens on the main street in town so I nabbed this fragrant beauty on my way to cafe-school! The boys are working on their own travel blogs and I'm, err, drinking coffee and photographing gardenias :) #happydays! x

71/365 Daci and Daci Deliciousness

Our time running out in Hobart and ready for a sugar hit, we were torn between going to Daci & Daci as recommend by my sister-in-law (Hi KJ!) and Jackman and McRoss as recommended by my brother (Hi Monty!). Running out of time, Daci won. It was 3 minutes closer. Yes, sometimes we are that lazy ;) No, not really but we were stealing T away from his work so time was of the essence.

We were NOT disappointed.

Daci & Daci is my idea of heaven. French heaven. In Tasmania. Lordy!

Hug had a salted caramel chocolate cake. Lovely, a gluten-free chocolate meringue and mousse delight. T and I bargained to share one sweet / one savory. Our savory was an AMAZING pumpkin and goats cheese tart with pretty much the best savory pastry I have ever eaten. Insane.

I couldn't choose the sweet. Too many pretty things! Eventually, I offered T colours...  Brown? Pink? Green? And green it was :)

x

48/365 Concentration

School today was week 1 of a kid's filmmaking class for Hug and some serious paper plane folding / berry frappe drinking / cafe sandpit chasies for Master 8 and his friend J :) 

Top and tailed with math sessions and an evening at Scouts. #lifeinmotion

43/365 Smile

There's not much about a hot-chocolate-inspired milk mustache that doesn't make me smile almost as brightly as this :)

(And I got Hug to agree to a photo. Hooray!)

42/365 Yogi Junior

Reflected. 

Santos health foods. Byron Bay. 

Travel planning with kids and coffee.

Last year I mentioned my wanderlust.

We were dreaming of a big trip. Penciled to be Europe 13-14.
It seemed all pie in the sky back then, silly even.
So far away and - really - could we? Should we?... Would we?

So we bit the bullet and did the only sensible thing. We bought tickets.
One way tickets at that.

Oh my. We. Were. Booked!!

Now we are in serious planning mode. Ahhhhhh, how I do love travel planning ;)

But our days and weeks are busy. And to-be-completely-honest we are tired at night. 

Or working and tired.

So we have carved out Saturday mornings as dedicated family travel planning time. With coffee of course. 'Cos life is too short to live without coffee ;) Okay. I'm on a detox at the moment so no coffee for me. Sob. But I'm feeling the coffee-love so stick with me.

Hug quizzing L about where this poster may have been from... any guesses?!

We want our boys to be involved. I have borrowed a few of Lonely Planet's Not For Parents books from the library for them to pour over and we bring them along.

It's nice if you choose a good cafe to do all of this heady work.

Eventually, the boys ask for time on their iPods. Their weekends-only treat. Or they return to their current reading book. Which gives us a little extra time. 

That's code for time when we can actually focus. Of course.

Have you traveled with your kids?
Do you have a dream destination or plans-in-the-midst?

Do share! x

Cafe School

We're not Unschoolers. 

I  believe in interest-driven, child-led learning but we do "do" school. 

Often at the kitchen table. Often on our front lawn. Often snuggled on the couch. We read and we write and we count and we laugh and we multiply and yes, sometimes we cry. All of us. It's a bit of a messy business this school thing.

And one morning a week, at least, we have decided to do "cafe school". 

Yesterday it was a little different as we had to be dropped off for the boys sailing lessons at 7am, almost two hours early, after a 5:30 wake up. Crazy. So a cup of coffee, juice for the boys and somewhere nice to sit was definitely in order.

I had their 'work' with me - on travelling days or for "cafe school" I pack a light load but it generally includes their Maths workbooks, some phonics work or a crossword puzzle, a reading book and/or a copy of The School Magazine and their handwriting books - but at 7am it's a bit early to throw them into that! 

So we pulled out one of their favourite school-time activities... Graffiti Doodle: Mess Up A Masterpiece (here's a link. We LOVE this book).

Doodlers are encouraged to deface and disfigure all manner of recognisable places, people and products: add some more heads to Mount Rushmore; put a Zulu warrior in a sentry box at Buckingham Palace; give Michelangelo's (naked) David a three-piece suit; give the Mona Lisa a full makeover. There are no restrictions to the havoc that can be created with this fun and rebellious book.

The brilliance lies in the book's rebellious good-hearted nature. Go on, go crazy. Let your imagination go wild. And... at the same time you're going to learn about The Bayeux Tapestry, Otto von Bismarck, The United Nations Headquarters, Gustave Doré, North Korea or the Papyrus of Ani. That's cool if you ask me.

The way we use it is that the boys take turns choosing a page (this stops L doing a squiggle on every page and announcing the book as "all used up"). Smile. We google the person or the place or the artwork, look at an image of the real thing and I read a little about it to them. Thanks wikipedia. Yesterday it was Mount Rushmore. Fun. 

And yum.

And somehow in the mix of all that I showed them a photo of a baby Polar Bear (awwww) and a photo of a rocket strapped to a 747 (Wow) and we discussed these things too. 

And Hug had an impromptu lesson using my camera. Because he will after all be 9 this weekend coming and almost-9 year olds can be trusted with such things. Lovely, being 6, of course sulked about that :) This is Hug's photo of his much-loved Harry Potter. 

Oh, and as it happened we were sat by a big map of Germany.

So they studied that. And laughed that there was a city called Hamburg(er).

And that was that.

Where do you most like to learn? (homeschooling or not :) X