Turning 50 - Tick!

Well aside from being a lazy little blogger and not blogging for way too long, I have been busy in other ways!  I'm motoring along in 'hurry up and finish - Christmas is coming!' mode and working on quilting my last project before Christmas, which is the Craftsy BOM.

Nearly finished, with only 3 blocks to quilt and the sashing. Then its on with the binding and a label and done.  My Red, Black & White quilt is waiting for the binding to be hand stitched down, as is the wallhanging for my mother-in-law.  No photos till they're all done though!

Hmmm, what else have I been up to?  Quilting Block Swap for November was sent and received.  I was paired up with Elizabeth in Victoria and I sent her this block:

 Elizabeth sent me this lovely block:

 I'm getting quite a few of these stars now, so thought I'd put them all together to see what colours I need more of.  Here they all are:

 I'm thinking some more green but perhaps in the stars rather than the backgrounds and some red or yellow in the background rather than the stars. Perhaps some more orange? What do you think?

Then on the 15th of November I turned 50.

I am really not a party person so decided to spend a couple of days away with my darling hubby Brian at a lovely holiday house on the beach at Aldinga.

We celebrated the big day spending the day wandering around the wineries of McLaren Vale, tasting here and there and then lunched at Tapestry Wines, having one of their lovely platters (which I forgot to take a photo of!) sitting out on the deck looking out over the valley:

Its a tough life but someone has to do it!

Then out for dinner that night. The following day started with a walk along the beach:

Nobody in either direction!  Hard to believe we're an hour from Adelaide isn't it? (It does get a little busier on weekends though!)

Then we were joined by four of our close friends, Kerry & Chris, Sue & Gary, and my brother Kym and his partner Aggie.  My brother just happens to have his birthday on the same day as me, except he is 8 years older.

We breakfasted on the balcony every morning (rough life I know!) and generally chilled out. The boys (and Sue) tried their hand at fishing without success, Kerry and I succeeded at visiting the craft fair in the local church and we walked along the beach. Then we took everyone out for dinner on Saturday night to the Victory Hotel at Sellicks Beach, which had views of the sunset out one window and views looking back down the coast and the city lights in the other direction, just lovely!

The weekend was exactly how I wanted it to be - very relaxed and laid back, time spent with good friends.
A memorable way to spend my 50th!

When we got home we were very surprised to see this guy at our local park.

We have lived in our neighbourhood for 28 years and have never seen a koala in the area so we were very surprised to see this guy up a relatively small gum tree near a major road next to the local football oval.  We weren't the only ones as he had his photo taken by quite a few people that day!  There are plenty of koalas in the Adelaide Hills but we are only about 10kms from the city here and about the same distance from the hills.  Fingers crossed he stays safe and heads away from the road!

Well that was a bit of an epic blog but knowing me, I won't blog again for a while so thought I might as well get it all out of my system! Next blog post will hopefully be to say all my Christmas pressies are done and I am sitting about with my feet up relaxing (as if!).