this place.

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Emmy Liddell

this place is where we live. it’s why i love autumn. it’s a place of memories. it’s where we play. it has totally captured our hearts forever. it’s glorious.

i was chatting with my sister who is living in london on skype the other night. she said what she misses most about sydney is the beach (aside from family & friends of course!!). yep. the beach. sydney beaches are truly the best in the world. at the moment, the water is warm and the air is cool. there is time for play during the day, and rugging up warm for the evening. autumn is the most beautiful time of year to be in sydney. i am loving every minute of it !!

happy friday everyone

sundays in the city.

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Emmy Liddell

this week we had a twist to our ‘sundays in the city’ trip. we didn’t actually make it to the city… but we sure did get a good look at beautiful sydney! i tell you, there is nothing like walking through a park with loads of picnic’ers about, overlooking the harbour, watching ferries & yachts, admiring the bridge & opera house … and all in a quick train ride. we love sydney. if you have never been, seriously … get over here quick !! it is simply stunning & never disappoints.

on sunday we travelled to milsons point by train, then ran around in bradfield park before munching on some snacks. oh, and didn’t i tell you? neon & stripes are the in thing this trip was totally spontaneous & i find that always makes for a better time. we were on route to purchase a soccer ball & bike helmet for joey, then detoured to the train station because the afternoon was too beautiful to miss. sydney autumn is my absolute favourite time of year. the weather is perfect during the day, and at night there is room for a good ol snuggle.

luckily mark got some snaps of me & boy liddell too. we’re bang on 38 weeks so fingers crossed we’ll meet our little man soon !!

we’re all going on a summer holiday.

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Emmy Liddell

Our morning ritual … beach time.

hilarious water fight with friend sam.

time at ye ol faithful lighthouses.

koolest kid on the block watching parachuters jump from planes.

well, actually … we’ve just been on a summer holiday. and let me tell you it was h.o.t. HOT. luckily our friends have just installed air-con – so this pregnant mumma did not melt from the heat. did i tell you it got to 42C (106F) the other day?!?!?! sheesh. There was no moving me off of that couch under the air-con. NO WAY. the day was #catastrophic which was quite scary for most of the state. i am so thankful that we do live in a country with excellent fire, ambo’s, ses & cops. they seemed to keep most fires under control. phew !

here are a couple of pics from our holiday. it is the second time we have house sat for some good friends of ours who live on the south coast. we used to holiday with them each year up in QLD. since having kids we have made the decision that our time with the kids’ grand-parents is oh so special & we have asked our friends if we can stay in their house while they are away. this means we get to see nana & pa (who also live on the south coast) each day for a whole week ! yippee ! the kids just adore their nana & pa and it is such a treat to be able to ‘pop in’ for a morning or afternoon, or even have them ‘pop in’ to us. nana & pa even have a pool. wow.

we set up a pretty good routine of going to the beach each morning before the heat hit, home for a smoothie, sleep for miss v, then off to nana & pa’s house each afternoon for a swim. we chopped and changed if needed, but that was pretty much our routine & it worked out great. we also had the chance to catch up with some other good friends & their kids (see miss v having a good ‘ol water fight with sam?) as well as my SIL & BIL and our newest nephew. i. just. can’t. wait. for. our. baby. to. arrive. we visited our favourite spots including the lighthouse and this year we tried a new cafe His Boy Elroy. Let’s just say it was a HUGE win. Get there if you can. Just do it.

mark & i did a lot of work too. i got stuck into some psychology for teachers (piaget & vygotsky to be precise) and mark blogged about his recent scholarship trip overseas where he has been researching Project Based Learning. we also set up a separate bank account for each of our kids which we have been meaning to do for, well now, three years… oooops! a bit negligent !! on the relaxing side, we watched plenty of Test, 20/20 and One Day cricket while sipping on latte’s in the comfort of our *own* home. Bliss !

We had a fabulous time and it was also incredibly nice to come home refreshed & ready for the (*massive!*) year ahead.

thank you tony & meg for lending us your house. i was paranoid i would ruin your veggie garden (photos to come) so watered it diligently. i am always paranoid that nebby will kick the bucket on our watch … he’s getting so old … needless to say, his age made him more enjoyable for the kids to pat without fear of being bitten or scratched this year i hope you guys feel as refreshed as we do.

until next year faithful holiday friend !

trains.

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

having a boy means that our house is obsessed with cars, trucks, tow bars, trailers, planes, helicopters and trains ! we are in full transportation mode & let’s just say i have never in my life known the proper names for all the different types of transportation machinery until now. a couple of weeks ago all our little man’s transportation dreams came true when we took him to The Train Shed. It was a full-on family fun day. We drove for over an hour to get there and can you believe that this beautiful countryside is still in Sydney?! Love it ! The kids had chicken nuggets & we had lamingtons. I don’t think you get any more Aussie Kitsch than that. Here are a few pics of our little trip … xx

the snow – part one.

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

the snow. our ultimate holiday destination ! so different from the beach (home), so fun, so snuggly, so fast, so much hot chocolate, donuts, family, friends, excitement, adrenalin, stacks, injuries, games and peace. such a good recipe for a holiday. we just love it.

a few years ago (pre-kids) we thought a six hour drive for a holiday was equivalent to being in prison for a year. “why on earth would anyone want to holiday six hours away?? yuck-o”. Now, the drive is bliss ! We get to see our beautiful country & play spot the animal, we listen to stories on the stereo, we put on our favourite music, let the kids have a good ol sleep, stop at exciting places (parliament house!) and journey with our family & friends. Road tripping is all part of the holiday and we love it. you peeps who live in the USA or Canada seem to love your road trips … what tips do you have for long car rides?

this year was extra special because our little two year old learnt how to ski for real. his pipi took him out most afternoons & (like his mamma) he feels the need for speed ! it was so great to watch him learn a new skill, have heaps of fun & ask for more.

we love Thredbo in the spring time. It is cold enough for snow, but warm enough for the kids to be able to play outside comfortably. we were lucky to get a bit of a dump at the end of the week so the kids could see snow falling. what a treat ! i can’t believe the holiday is over for another year… from now on Mark & I are going to spend our anniversary at the snow, and then another week in spring with the kids at the snow. it’s so good making plans for our little family & setting up family traditions.

here are a few pics of the kids playing & skiing in the snooooooooow !

snap shots of our life …

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

… according to our iPhones …

** most of these photos are taken using Instagram … you can follow me at: emmyliddell

Hong Kong 2 of 3.

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

we just loved hong kong. i’m so glad mark organised for us to go to a city to explore rather than an island to sit on the beach. it suits us better to be immersed in a new culture, figuring out how to get places, seeing how people live differently, and exploring. in hong kong we loved the hustle & bustle, the million trillion people walking everywhere all the time, the late nights, the contrast of a highly technologically advanced city still using trusted traditional methods (e.g. bamboo scaffolding !) & the dumplings !

we kept a travel journal of each day with bits & pieces as well as photos. I hope that one day the baby will ‘discover’ it & that i can relive the memories telling her story after story after story.

we experienced our first typhoon in HK ! it was quite surreal … when we woke up in the morning there was a T3 warning. we thought it was totally normal but apparently it was the first typhoon of the season. we cruised around that day & went to the Felix bar that night for a cocktail & to enjoy the famous light show from the Kowloon side. unbeknown to us, the typhoon warning had reached T8 (out of T10) which is quite serious ! so the light show was cancelled (we only realised this about an hour later!) ha ! while at the bar we met some folk from new zealand (who were very Green & let us know it because of the political climate in Australia at the moment) and we suggested they catch the ferry back to the island. being from oz, we are totally used to rough ferry rides … but let’s just say, in a T8 and a rickety old ferry in HK i just hope those NZ’ers survived !! walking home everyone in hong kong was bunkering down for the typhoon – all windows & doors were being taped, sand bags were put everywhere … it was a bit scary. but the typhoon hit full force while we were sound asleep & we woke up the next morning to a beautiful day.

we also loved the K11 shopping mall. It is a shopping mall that is also an art gallery. the art was inspiring & the motto of K11 is “in art we live” – perfect. we also had our first cup of english breakfast tea/affogato at the mall since we had left sydney – it tasted so good, but so wrong at the same time !

i just can’t get over how good the dumplings were in hong kong. it should be expected, but man-o-man i miss them. i think we’ll take a sneaky trip to china town in the next few days with the kids to satisfy our craving. i have also been drinking jasmine tea religiously since we got back … ha ! it’s so funny how a place can make you change habits (even if for a short while !).

hong kong. we love you. thank you for being so good to us.

susie homemaker.

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

lately i have been a real ‘susie homemaker’. it has been so much fun ! a lot in our little world has changed to help me jump on the homemaker bandwagon …

when we got married i didn’t really have much direction in how i wanted our place to look … renting can be so hard because you never really feel settled. i think i just thought ‘anything will do, we’ll be out of here before we know it’. in hindsight, this was a bad attitude … it meant that we just collected stuff that was functional & that fit into the space of a shoebox rather than collect things we love.

i also didn’t get a chance to ‘nest’ when joey was born because i went into labour the day i left work (things are always on the move in my world !), nor with the baby because i had joey around my feet 24/7.

since we have moved, it finally feels like i have the space and the head space to actually start collecting things i love for our home. i am sure that things will constantly be changing and improved around the place & i am totally happy with that ! it means that we’ll get a lot of creative stimulation, i get the benefit of frequenting op shops, and we will grow with the space as we grow as a family. yeah !

here are my latest finds from the glorious world of op shops …

the beloved new green couch*, the blue dress (just like my grandmothers <3 ), the pink blanky …

aperture for when peeps come over & i want our rest room to look fancy ..

fav pyrex dishes & blanky …

retro pink cutlery … sorry mark !!

the sweetest vintage toy corvette cars that i ever did see !

so fun hey?! just loving living the dream.

i have a few more items that are on my ‘look out for’ list … if i can’t find them in the next little while i’ll have to try etsy.

* the night the green couch was delivered we had some friends over for dinner. they could not believe that it only cost me $30 & it was so hilarious that now everything i purchase is compared to ‘the cost of a couch’. my friend called me the next day to say she was so inspired by my op shopping that she visited vinnies & found four cushions that she had been looking for (& had been told were sold out of every store in Australia) for ‘the cost of half a couch’. how ’bout that! love it.

Lest we forget.

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

…They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them…

From ‘For the Fallen‘ – Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Today we remember and are eternally thankful for our ANZACs. The brave men & women who fought for our freedom. This morning we ate croissants, drank fresh tea & enjoyed our children in freedom. Thank you.

We remember my Pa who fought for Australia and the Allies at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915. He survived & went on to fight in France.

We also remember Mark’s Papa who fought for Australia and the Allies in Borneo. He also survived.

We are proud to have such a rich heritage of freedom fighters.

Lest we forget.

a morning in the city.

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

we love going to the city. it is by far one of our favourite family outings. we’re lucky that we have family who live in the centre of sydney so we frequent it loads. the other morning, with sick kids in tow, we decided to go for a coffee in the city. sometimes just going for a coffee is a mission for us, so it seemed totally achievable. we wanted to coffee in miller’s point but there was not much open early in the morning so we walked down to the rocks and circular quay. it was b-e-a-utiful. such incredible architecture, gorgeous little alleyways, and of course, the spectacular side of sydney – the opera house and harbour bridge.

we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the MCA has opened it’s new wing. yippee ! of course we just had to pop in and have a look. wow ! it is awesome. the art is (as usual) inspiring, entry is free (as usual), the lift is fully glass (so as not to lose any of the view), the building is fresh & best of all they have a kids art section which provides a ‘hands on’ experience. yes ! we were winning that morning.

one of my favourite artworks in this exhibition is ‘the lover circles his own heart’, 1993, by hossein valamanesh. combined with le carnaval des animaux by french composer camille saint-saens this little video we made makes me smile.